Talk:Operation Hailstone

Article Name
Why is this article not named the Battle of Truk as it is in the majority of world war two literature.XavierGreen (talk) 00:38, 19 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I've never heard it called the Battle of Truk, and I thought I was familiar with the literature. However, Samuel Eliot Morison refers to it as Operation Hailstone, which is about as magisterial as it gets. --Yaush (talk) 13:15, 4 September 2013 (UTC)


 * I am for changing the name. "Operation Hailstone" was coined as code name, intentionally hard to understand.  A Wikipedia article should be accessible to anyone, not just people who are already familiar with the subject. David R. Ingham 00:55, 5 January 2019 (UTC)  — Preceding unsigned comment added by David Ransford Ingham (talk • contribs)

How many carriers?
The body of the article says 5 fleet carriers and four light carriers. The infobox states 8 fleet carriers and four light carriers. Someguy1221 (talk) 02:58, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

So: Thank you, Telecine Guy (talk) 20:02, 12 January 2023 (UTC)
 * From US Navy: The U.S. Force consisted of four new Essex-class carriers––Yorktown, Essex, Intrepid, and Bunker Hill––plus Enterprise and four light carriers Belleau Wood, Cabot, Monterey, and Cowpens, along with more than 500 aircraft. In addition, six new fast battleships, ten cruisers and 28 destroyers rounded out the force. TG 58.4, under the command of Rear Admiral Samuel P. Ginder, with Saratoga, Princeton, Langley, and escorts was detached from TF 58 to cover the landings at Eniwetok (Operation Catchpole), where they commenced strikes on 16 February 1944.
 * 5 fleet carriers
 * 4 light carriers

Low survival rate and little recovered..
I have dove almost all of Truk's wrecks save for the Oite (due to weather) over three trips and 20 plus dive days. While those that have not seen the machinery, tanks, artillery shells, food containers, sake and all sorts of other supplies which litter the holds, you may find it hard to believe that it was not salvaged but I have seen first hand what was left and the holds are full. 50 foot wide holes in the side of a ship make deserting/fleeing hard and at 100 plus feet, salvage impossible. ≈≈≈≈≈

The Japanese seem to believe that most of the soldiers, at least survived. There is a site dedicated to the IJN that has posted a great many Tabular Record of Movement (TROM) entries, derived from the ship's logs, US intercepts, and the IJN Official History.

What might be useful here are some primary sources---unless you are a qualified salvage diver working from the original ship's manifests, in which case I would say your position is very strong, though again, citing your comparisons and a document with your dive salvage reports would be useful; obviously, you can't pile them all up here!

The trouble with using "Truk", as you'll know having dived it, is that the place is huge, and not all losses were the same.

Obviously this is mostly a matter of getting the details right, because the summation comes out the same regardless of how many Japanese troops swam ashore or how many cargoes were salvaged---Operation Hailstone ended Truk as a fleet anchorage for the Japanese Navy, and destroyed its value as a bastion in the South Pacific.Ranya (talk) 18:23, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
 * The statement that ""Very few of the troops aboard the sunken ships survived and little of their cargoes were recovered." is sourced to: Lindemann, Klaus (2005). Hailstorm Over Truk Lagoon: Operations Against Truk by Carrier Task Force 58, 17 and 18 February 1944, and the Shipwrecks of World War II. Oregon, USA: Resource Publications. It's apparently also based on data from divers (I assume). I don't have a copy, so I'm not sure what to say here. It seem extremely likely that the "little of their cargoes were recovered" is true -- besides the depth issues that you mention, the Japanese at Truk would have lacked the resources for much recovery work, being soon cut off from resupply from Japan. The "Very few of the troops aboard the sunken ships survived" is a little more problematic -- troops, unlike cargo, can take to lifeboats. However, I can certainly understand how they would not do that just because the general anchorage was under attack, or even their ship, and if they waited until their ship was actually sinking it would probably be too late in a lot of cases. I guess. Herostratus (talk) 15:10, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

List of casualties
The list submitted in Section 4 : "List of warships in Truk at the time of attack" is missing at least 2 well-known casualties - the Fujikawa Maru and the Rio de Janeiro Maru. Klaus Lindemann in "Hailstorm over Truk Lagoon" (which is listed under "Further Reading") arguably contains the most definitive list of wrecks. Diverdiva (talk) 20:42, 17 September 2018 (UTC)
 * This is an oversight on my part, since both of these are contained in the source used to compile the list for the article. It bears mentioning that as definitive as Lindemann is, the source used to compile the article list includes not only Lindemann but 7 other sources, primary and secondary, to determine the veracity of claims. The issues with the casualty list rests with me rather than the source author. Thank you for catching this! I'll need to spend time going back through the tables. Cheers, Finktron (talk) 15:44, 18 September 2018 (UTC)