Guadalcanal is probably THE campaign where victory did most equally depend on all three branches of the military

You should check out a video by Montemayor about midway from the Japanese perspective it’s really interesting

I think ive learned more and been more engaged in history than i ever did in school. Also love the Civil War stuff! Thanks

American radar was perhaps one of their biggest advantages and Guadalcanal shows very much how there was a lot of incompetence/Inexperience among US officers who failed to make use of their technology Also the atlanta is absolutely legendary in my book

Operations Room has always been one of my favorite channels...glad to see you're reacting to it now

John Basilone did earn his Medal of Honor during the Battle for Henderson Field over the course of the night of 24-25 October 1942

Man, I used to watch this series called Battle 360 here on KZfaq, ith all the episodes detailing the Pacific War through the perspective of the crew of USS Enterprise CV-6 including the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal before they were taken down by copyright. Really shows what History Channel used to be like.

They talk about the Hiei pounding the San Francisco, killing her captain and admiral who were both awarded the Medal of Honor. In actuality, Captain Cassin Young had already been awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions at Pearl Harbor, when he was captain of the repair ship Vestal. He was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross for his actions off Guadalcanal.

A small mistake by Operations Room at 6:16. The ship shown here is the Baltimore-class heavy cruiser USS Helena (CA-75), but the actual Helena that participated in the battle is the Brooklyn-class light cruiser USS Helena (CL-50). Baltimore-class did not exist by this point yet and the two heavy cruisers present were USS Portland and USS San francisco.

Thank you for making this reaction video! I thoroughly enjoyed it. William Halsey was a decisive commander, He placed battleships in a shallow, narrow straight and it paid off. Some of his decisions did not pay off as well, but that is the weight of leadership. Everything seemingly went wrong for South Dakota as she was was pummeled by large caliber projectiles, but battleships are made to slug it out and take the hits. The workers at NY Ship in Camden NJ built a tough old girl. My Dad told me about this battle from his viewpoint on the South Dakota.

A great book that covers a lot of the naval battles around Guadalcanal from the contemporary perspective is "Japanese Destroyer Captain" by Tameichi Hara. Great read!

Love Operations Room content :D. Could you check out Montemayor's videos? His channel is similar to Operation Room. Any of his videos on the Pacific front is great. One of my favorite videos is The Battle of Midway 1942: Told from the Japanese Perspective (1/3)

If you're on a WWII naval operations binge, please please please watch History Buffs' Midway Parts 1 & 2~ It's a super insightful and entertaining 2 part series, as always from History Buffs, but it also focuses a lot on the context of the circumstances around the Battle of Midway!

You already reacted to video from the Operations Room before at Easy Company Assault on Brecourt Manor. I wasn't sure after you said that this is premiere, however since I love Operations Room and Band of Brothers I had to check.

You should really check out some of Drachinifels videos most are a bit longer than what you usually react to but there are a a few around 30 minutes like the battle of Hampton Roads that I'm sure you'd like.

Fortunately for the USN, the 2 BC 's (Kiroshima and Hiei) have the armour protection of a heavy cruiser so it's a more even fight than it first seems. As for the channel (Operations Room)I find the videos much better researched than most out there and the presentation is very good. I have done a lot of research on "Operation Source" myself (for my own lecture in a couple of weeks time for our military history group here in Manchester), and the video on this subject is very accurate on almost everything

Love the Ops Room. Amazing work.

I love these longer reactions to the more in-depth battles. Your adding of information really enhances these types of video presentations.

I love the operations room animated maps, makes it so much easier to understand from a birds eye view wheats happening all across the battlefield

I'm glad you're covering Operations Room. They make amazing content!

I don't know if you've already done this video but you might want to check out Montemayor's video on Midway from the Japanese perspective. I believe it's one of the best videos covering a single battle from an informative perspective I've ever seen.

Operations Room is an amazing channel. Please keep doing their stuff.

The death of brothers made me remember a story once told by my russian teacher, basically a mother let all of her 8 sons to go into the eastern front during ww2 and none of them came back, i do not remember how they died, i just know that none of them came back home

Two of my favorite channels coming together!

The Sullivans influenced a lot of personnel decisions as well. For example they try not to get spouses who might both be serving with kids to be stationed at the same command that way there is a reduced chance that if one dies, the other goes as well (and especially if they have kids). There isn't often a time where the policy is put into action quickly to say withdraw someone from danger like with the Nylan brothers but there are lots of procedures in place to try and prevent those circumstances from even potentially taking place.

My maternal grandfather was in the RAAF in new Guinea. He was only a corporal but he was in one of the few roles in the air force who carried a weapon as an airfield guard. I'm sure as not a frontline soldier he didn't see much horror but he hardly ever talked about the war. He was such a gentle man and it probably haunted him to his death bed that he ever fired a weapon on a human if he in fact did so. I did hear from a cousin that he did sometimes man machine guns aboard bombers but I never heard my grandfather talk about this. He only ever told one story that I remember and it was a comedic one. They were watching a movie when the air raid sirens went off. So in the scramble to get back to barracks my gf and another couple of Aussies hitched a ride on a American jeep as the Aussie base was on the way to the American one. As they passed the Aussie barracks they screamed for the Americans to let them off only to get the response "I ain't stopping til I get where I'm going" lmao 😂😂😂 they then had to run back to the Aussie base.

I absolutely love the Operations Room, amazing channel for those wanting a detailed battle space picture in different wars.

In early July I met a Sailor from the North Carolina. He described what it was like to play for the ships band and what they would do, and I talked a little about my experiences as a Musician. (He was a Trumpet, and I, a Euphonium, so some brass jokes were exchanged) He told us what it was like on the ship during combat. The Band was assigned to the damage control team and given firefighting training. He described his experiences during Guadalcanal when the North Carolina was hit by an IJN Type 95 torpedo. When battle stations were sounded he made ready to render assistance to the damage control team, but there was no fire on board. He served on the “Showboat” for the duration of the war, and after the North Carolina was taken out of active service he was stationed on the USS Shangri-La (CV-38) until he retired from the Navy.

Defo watch more of these guys and you still need to watch the Victoria cross documentary

If anyone wants a book on Guadalcanal that puts you both in the shoes of command and crew I recommend "Neptune’s Inferno" it’s really well written and not at all dry for a history book

Great video! Both Operation Room's and your reaction here. Good stuff! There's a couple of fascinating aspects to Guadalcanal. First, as you already mentioned in the video, the overwhelming quantitative and qualitative US advantages later in the Pacific War had not yet materialized; in 1942 we were scratching hard just to achieve and maintain parity at best...and not always succeeding. Second (and related to the above), the Guadalcanal campaign was somewhat unique in how all three warfare domains - air, land, and sea - were all so equally critical AND so evenly and hotly contested, at such protracted length. Of course all three realms were equally important in all major Pacific battles, but in just about every other case, one side or the other went into the fight with an already-substantial advantage, even to the point of foregone conclusion for US air/sea superiority during late 1944 and 1945. There's of course been *tons* of good history written (or recorded) about this campaign. Richard Franks' "Guadalcanal" (1990) remains among the very best 30+ years later. Franks does a magnificent job in balancing the land, air, and sea facets, and really bringing out their inherent interdependence. In my opinion...if a person is going to read just a single book about Guadalcanal, this is the one. Final comment: it's easy - and natural - to view battles somewhat in isolation. I've certainly done it. But over time as I've read & studied the Pacific War, I've come to better understand 1942 as a continuous process of initiative gradually shifting from Japan to the US+Allies. A process in which June 4th at Midway was undoubtedly the most spectacular single day and important event....but a single day/event nevertheless. Just as much as the major events themselves, I'm also deeply interested in their context. The moves/countermoves, how the battles grew out of earlier events and influenced decision-making for later events. This chain began on Dec 7th itself, when the Pearl Harbor attack missed the USN carriers...and culminated right here in the mid-Nov night battles covered in this video. I find it a bit ironic that it was Willis Lee (a rather overlooked admiral who I think deserves more attention) and his battleships - not the carrier task forces - who finally consummated the last act of this almost year-long saga.

For all the horrors frontline soldiers endured the casualties pail in comparison when you consider how many sailors are aboard a large ship and it gets sunk.

When I was in they wouldn't assign brothers to the same ship. It does happen but both have to personally request it and takes Admiral approval, saw it once two identical twin brothers. Great guys.

Operations room is such a great channel about all sorts of conflicts, including the attack on the Iranian embassy in London

My Mother told me that the news of what happened to the 5 Sullivan brothers came to her home town in the Republic Ballina Co Mayo it caused great sadness in the town ,my Mothers maiden name was Sullivan so I wonder if there was a connection there

Destroyer is shortened from PT Boat Destroyer which is why they have torps, but WWII is where we learn to use them to hunt Cruisers and Submarines with Cruiser being a little more suited for submarines. Before the US had built its Navy up, they adapted to using Destroyers to charge enemy Battle ship; firing some torps and praying that they close distance fast enough to avoid the big guns range as they cannot travers all the way down to aim at such small ships at close range.

Rah, always gotta love the Marine Corps stuff

Not only did larger combatants take a fair amount of time to construct but even if you have an advantage in gross tonnage that doesn't mean you can shift it to wherever you want. Ships are relatively slow in the scale of an ocean and other commitments can tie down outsized numbers of ships (or supply challenges can prevent them from traversing to where they are needed). The US was luckily leaning in the correct direction with the pre-war scramble to build up the Navy. If they had not the war would have likely dragged on significantly longer. Nowadays the build times are even worse, ofc. Something to be said for the relatively "simple" nature of WW2 ships.

Your voice is great to fall asleep too , I always put on your videos before I go to bed so I can have some fun history before I sleep

Although the _Kongo_ class ships (which includes the _Hiei_ and _Kirishima)_ started out as pre-WW1 battlecruisers, they were reclassified as "fast battleships" after extensive modification in the 1930's.

Love the intro to Op Room's channel. That Rolls Royce music to my ears.

Love how you acknowledge how difficult night battles are. I had an argument with some "history buff" online once over the feat of the USS Washington sinking the Japanese destroyer Ayanami at long range in a night battle. This dude literally refused to understand how impressive that was even with advance radar fire control system. I was in the Marines and my unit have been lost before conducting night ops even with radio contact with other platoons. I know from experience that night battles along with the possibility of friendly fire are the worst.

i love videos like this and your added insight makes them even better

I'm an afficiando of WWII, but am still deficient in knowledge of the Pacific and Africa theaters. Thank for this informative post.

you should watch drachinifel's video on the battle off Samar, I think that the battle itself is really interesting and would be a good video to react to.

One of the most amazing stories in WWII is that, at one point the USS Enterprise was the only remaining functional US aircraft carrier in the South Pacific; and, even it had been damaged by Japanese bombing strikes, so the forward elevator was not working. The forward elevator is how planes are taken below deck after they land. Without it, they had to push the planes back to the middle elevator by hand to lower them below deck. That took about 1/2 an hour per plane, which was not fast enough in combat conditions. So, they actually launched fighters from the Enterprise to attack the Japanese attempting to retake Guadalcanal & landed them on the Henderson airfield island runway, only to slowly be returned to the Enterprise later.

Love operations room please react to the Doolittle raid and battle of midway they are so informative and would love to hear your thoughts

Anything from Montemayor is great Drachinifel has an excellent 8 part series on the naval battles around Guadalcanal

You should check out Montemayor's Battle of Savo Island video. Its an hour, but oh man does it really give a great breakdown/analysis of the scenario.

I love Operations Room but I have the sinking feeling I'll never get to use their content in a high school classroom. I don't know if the length of his videos is a problem, but hypohystericalhistory is a great emerging history channel that has done some excellent videos on the Australian-American New Guinea campaign that was happening concurrently. They are 1hr+ per video so probably a split-part reaction series for you :P

Yes! More Operations!

"The Operations Room" is my favorite channel on YT

My grandfather was a marine in WWII and his first tour of duty was Guadalcanal. He was one of the first waves of marines to land before the Japanese navy showed up and run the American nave off. In fact in the book Guadalcanal diary, there's a picture of a line of marines walking in from a dock and he's one of the marines at the back.

Was waiting for him to react to this love the content 👌

enterprise was more or less the flagship of the pacific fleet in ww2 and i love to hear about the pacific war since the names of ships is recognizable and the class of ships

The Operations Room just did two videos on the battle of Iwo Jima, I think it’d be really interesting for you to check out

Fun fact: Belgium soldiers charged a german tank battalion with pitchforks and managed to catch the german battalion commander who was laughing at the attempt. Later the commander was interrogated and revealed a german offensive through the ardennes, which was then forwarded to the french high command. Which was rejected as impossible.

Though he didn't go into specifics. My grandfather was at guado canal. He mentioned that this was before he got his m1. He was still going in with a world war I Springfield rifle.

I second the comments saying you should check out Montemayor's descriptions of the Pacific Theater so far.

You should look up Drachinifel

WWII has always been one of the most intriguing wars for me because of the technological advances in such a short amount of time, the competing ideologies that would lay the groundwork for global diplomatic policy for generations, along with the plethora of stories of survival and innovative battle tactics that led to the conclusion of the war. I love seeing reactions to the Pacific Theater in the Second World War in part from my grandpaw that influenced him to join the USMC in the Korean War.

Thank You! for stating that there were other combatants in the Pacific theatre. The rest of us are too often overlooked!

Ops Room did a few videos in collaboration with Drachinifel, who has a video on this battle as well which goes into a lot more detail. Drach's video may not be as condusive to making a reaction video as this one, but I highly recommend it (indeed his entire channel) to anyone interested in naval history. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/oKuEZbBp3raYeqM.html (Drach's Guadalcanal campaign playlist)

Over on "World War 2"s WW2 in real time channel they are currently going through this time period. One thing you are missing in your discussion of the impact of Guadalcanal is that this represents the furthest extension of Japanese power extension, and the first time that western powers have been able to hold back the Japanese army. (The Chinese army has been able to stop the Japanese, at great cost, but the UK and Dutch armies have by this time lost Malaysia, Burma, and Indonesia.) "Henderson Field" was originally started by the Japanese and was captured and completed by the US. Japan saw their operation as retaking land and positions they previously occupied. At the strategic level, this action is happening at the same time as Japan's attempt to take New Guinea and Port Moresby overland. Diverting troops to retake Guadalcanal means they didn't have the manpower to take Port Moresby, even though they managed to get within sight of it. Meanwhile over in the USSR the battle of Stalingrad has started up, so everything is in the balance and on the edge now. (I'm writing this as of the beginning of October, so "now" will be different when you read this comment.)

My grandfather was a Marine who fought on Guadalcanal. I have his uniform, dog tags and other misc items.

Operations room dark docs, dark skies, ,and dark seas are my favorite for straight up history I highly recommend looking them up

John Basilone is from my hometown and I went to high school his granddaughter

As far as the sole survivor policy goes... My father-in-law's great uncle served in WW2. The only reason his grandfather didn't serve was because the only children in that family was the 2 brothers.

Love seeing my home state's battleship USS North Carolina in the thumbnail 😀

Semper Fi 1st MarDiv!!

This battle was absolute carnage, I've been reading Neptune's Inferno by James D. Hornfischer (RIP) and learned how they had to have gore patrols on ships after battles from the brutality especially after this one

I’d love to see you react to some warhawks battle maps to compare how accurate his work is

Have you ever done anything on the 1944 Battle of Leyte Gulf? It would have to be a multi part presentation.

Callahan needed to be on Helena with its better radar, thus having a clearer picture of the battle.

Can you do the battle of Samar especially taffy 3 that’s one hell of a story.

It's a tragedy for the family if you got 5 sons and they all die. In my grandfather's village there is also a family like that except when the Nazi commander came to get their last son to join the army the mother chased them away.

Rear Admiral Kidd was killed on board USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. Rear Admiral Daniel Callaghan was killed at Guadalcanal together with Rear Admiral Scott, while Rear Admiral Theodore Chandler was killed in January 1945, when his ship was hit by a kamikaze. They are the "dead admirals" who gave their names to the Kidd-class destroyers (DD-993 - DD-996).

Savo Island and Guadalcanal highlights how ill prepared the US Navy and commanders were to battle the Japanese Navy at night battles

What was interesting and also really bad for the USN task force was that Callahan was senior to Norman Scott by a week, thus gaining command of the task force despite having no experience in night battles where Norman Scott would probably have been better served to lead the task force.

My great grandfather was at Guadalcanal

If it was just you and another sibling that enlisted in the US military, does the sole survivor policy also count for that too?

Only 1hour almost live all the ones I see are always months old

FYI Rear Admiral Isaac Campbell Kidd on USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor became the first U.S. Navy flag officer killed in action in World War II as well as the first killed in action against any foreign enemy.

Has there been any movies made about this night time naval battle

Your inforamtion about the first Admiral killed in battle isn't exactly correct. Rear Admiral Kidd was awarded the Medal of Honor for his leadership aboard the USS Arizona. The only thing left of the flag bridge that could be given to his wife was his Naval Academy ring, which was melted into the bulkhead.

Look up the Kidd Class DDGs [aka the dead Admirals class] - there are 4 of them. Kidd was killed on the Arizona. Callaghan and Scott were in this battle. Chandler died of burns from a Kamikaze in Jan 45.

Hey! Anazing video as always but could you consider doing some videos on Daniel boone? He is an ancestor of mine and id like to learn more about him Via your channel...All i know is he was a leading frontiersman early in Americas life...Thanks for reading!

08:06 minor error here. Destroyer's name is Akatsuki.

First US Admiral to die in combat was Isaac Kidd at Pearl Harbor.

"Iron Bottom Sound" became the name for the waters around Savo Island. Those watching this probably know that already.

The Sullivan brothers ome of my favorite ghost story.

3:32 Admiral Isaac Campbell Kidd was killed aboard USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor.

Sabaton just released a new song called "Steel Commander" its about tank warfare. Its an amazing song that I think you ahould react to

Con u reacts to soldier of 3 armies from sabaton is Really good

Im woundering what happend to uss south dokota, in this vid it looks like it was damaged badly and it faces the full heat of multiple taskforces of japan after the uss Washington slipt away? How did it survive? And ifso, why did the japanese let a battleship leave?

I wonder if this is relevant but have to you watched "The Pacific" by HBO? It's like the "Band of Brothers of the Pacific theater". I'm just 2 minutes into the video so maybe this will be answered along the way. Regardless, The Operations Room is a great channel, thanks for covering their content!

Hey i know its not the right video for this but i have a qwestion. Did the soldier(s) that discover order 191 reciev a reward, if yes what was it?

Got to be early for this

That was great

Even if the Japanese had managed to destroy the air field it probably would have been a pyrrhic victory. They could hardly afford to lose a heavy cruiser since their ability to build new ships was very limited.