Warbird Information Exchange

In recent posts it was called into question the validity of the premise that a significant amount of Purple Heart Medals were manufactured for a potential invasion of Japan. In reference to this question are the connected premises that the surplus of medals were so great that they continued to be issued to those earning them medal to this very day.
by D. M. Giangreco in the Journal of Military History, 61 (July 1997): 521-82
http://www.waszak.com/giangreco/index.html



Further references to the estimated casualties in Operation Downfall, the planned amphibious invasion of mainland Japan, can be found below.


http://www.nps.gov/wwii/historyculture/august-1945.htm

More interesting reading regarding casualties for “Operation Downfall” from the Defense Technical Information Center: http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/jfq_pubs/2109.pdf

Ryan, does it seem to you that making 800,000 Purple Heart medals just for the invasion might be very bad for troop morale and for public support of the war? Or was this done in secret to avoid such publicity? Were these large estimates of casualties made public or is this knowledge after the fact?

I don't recall any such publicity or huge minting of medals before the Normandy invasion. I wasn't there of course, but I haven't read of such.

How about the medals for the first 4 years of the war? I'd expect the Army thought there would be many casualties and needed many Purple Hearts. Did they mint them all along or just wait until right before the invasion of Japan?

I'd like to know when the large batch of medals was minted? Was it done over a year or more or was it done all at once in a short time right before the planned invasion.

In another source I think I have read that U S army figures for the invasion size might be 2 or 3 million, am not sure of this. Yet your casualty estimate quoted above goes up to 4 milllion. If we believe that figure, it seems that we have to believe that the invaders will suffer virtually 100 % losses. Do you think that is realistic? Was there any allied invasion anywhere where losses even came close to 100%?I am thinking that losses on some of the worst Pacific islands was 10% killed and 35% wounded, not sure, but nowhere near 100%. It's only one po point, but some WIK sources give U S losses at Okinawa totaling about 48,000, not your source of 84,000.

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Bill Greenwood
Spitfire N308WK

Moderator please kill this debate, it goes on and on. Lets talk airplanes

With all due respect Tom, I believe this is a legitimate topic to discuss and an interesting bit of history that is relevant to warbird history. Nothing political has been discussed and if you aren't interested in the subject I'm not sure why you would click on the thread. As you can see by the number of people that have viewed the thread that several are interested. How would you like me to scan through all of the postings you have made and I was uninterested in to ask they all be locked or removed? There needs to be no politics inserted in this conversation. Like Bill I was skeptical of the amount of medals produced and the fact there was still a stock of these around to be issued to date. I wanted to researxh this for myself and found compelling information to lead me to believe that this may in fact be legitimate. Varying degrees of this story have been published but I took the time to find publishings that did have referances and information that was published in areas that seemed to have a reasonable amount of historical credabilty. If you would prefer to stick to threads like "what's your favorite color on a warbird" or "that plane is neeto" then feel free, but others have an interest in discovering some of histories mysteries or discovering history that isn't well published. I respectfully ask that you do not try and moderate my posts. If a moderator doesn't like my post they are free to do so, and they don't need your commentary or intervention to do so.

The WWII stock went down fairly fast with Vets being reissued their awards.
A friend here in town was reissued his Navy Cross about 6 years ago and it was
a WWII issue in a beautiful short leather box. Many WWII era numbered Silver Star
were remanufactured WWII awards. I have a few of them that are numbered with
new ribbons and broaches. A number of my friends from the OG NG woulded in Iraq
all rec'v current manufacted Purple Hearts.

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Don't touch my junk!!

If it was published widley at the time there doesn't seem to be a lot of documentation around it that has made it into the www. After a lot of searching yesterday it was hard for me to find any information out there that had sinificant references. The articles that I have referenced acutally put the number of produced medals around 500,000.



At the time when planning for this operation took place there were around 1,000,000 US casualties for the course of the entire war. While I'll agree that my opinion is that the orignially quoted number of proposed casualties for Operation Downfall seems high, but agian this is my opinion and I have not carefully studied thesubject.

Also, my opinion on the amount of casualties I think we would have had is irrelevant to the original question of whether or not 500,000 Purple Heart medals were produced in anticipation of the invasion of Japan. My question was in regards to whether or not they were produced and not whether or not an appropriate amount were produced. What is relevant to this discussion is what Marshall, Truman, and MacArther thought, which is what I have provided some referenece to. The validity of those references is up for debate, and I do find it interesting that I found no reference for the number of Purple Hearts that didn't in some way eventually find it's way back to Mr. Giangreco's articles.

I started my search as a skeptic, but did find some evidence that leads me to believe that the medals were in fact produced in large numbers near 500,000, and that that supply was not near depletion until around year 2000 when 35,000 new medals were produced, although there may still be many of the original batch throughout the supply chain.

Ryan

Bill,

I definitely respect your opinions, but I've noticed that a couple of times you've tried to compare statistics of the Normandy invasion with the planned invasion of mainland Japan. In my opinion, this comparison is an apples-to-oranges affair.

I would encourage you to take some time to research the invasion of Okinawa more fully. I think you'll get a better handle on why casualty estimates soared for the invasion of Japan.

Happy hunting.

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It was a good idea, it just didn't work.

Dan K. as for Normandy, and Japan, re the medals. Seems likely that if the army thought there would be a lot of casualties on D Day, they would have medals minted, not only for Japan. Didn't a wound in the war against Hitler count? Maybe you have specific info on this, I don't.
And think of this, there may be a reason why there's not much info on the minting for Normandy. That invasion is pretty well accepted as done, there was no Bomb available then, so no need to "sell" its use to the public or history as maybe is done for Japan.
In my memory it seems there were estimates of 100,000 killed in the invasion, actual figures were about 10,500.
As for Okinawa, I did find info on WIX,it is in my last post, about 10% killed and 35% wounded, total about 48,000, the highest losses of the war.
As Ryan says, much of this info on the medals and losses is traced back to only one source, Mr. G, hard to know how accurate or unbiased his writings are. I believe I am correct that he was involved in the Enola Gay controversy, took a position on one side, hardly neutral. One side wanted to say the Japanese were instigators of the war, the other that they were victims of the Bomb. It's obvious to any historian that both were true, but that was not what each side was pushing for.

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Bill Greenwood
Spitfire N308WK

On a more detailed note the late Jeff Cooper a competitive shooter and writer about guns served in the 2nd Marine Division in WW2 and was involved in planning thier part of the invasion. He noticed that the 2nd Marines was not mentioned in any planning after D plus 2. No orders for withdrawal or refitting or defence, just nothing. Thinking it a mistake he asked around and was told that it was expected that the entire division would be wiped out in two days, not decimated (reduced by one tenth), but obliterated. That's around 18,000 men. On Iwo Jima and Okinawa many smaller Marine units had 70% to 85% casualties and that is what drove the Marines estimate.

On the other hand as we know with orders for F8F and P-51H and P-82 aircraft orders can always be cancelled. Maybe those thousands of medals were never made or delivered.

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"I can't understand it, I cut it twice and it's still too short!" Robert F. Dupre' 1923-2010 Go With God.

John, just my guess, but I expect that the 500,000 medals were likely made, but maybe it was not all at once soley for the invasion of Japan. We really don't know.

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Bill Greenwood
Spitfire N308WK

How can you tell the manufacture date of a military medal?

They don't have dates on them, or any other sort of code or insignia cast/stamped into them that I can see.

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Randy, good to see you even if briefly at EAA. I came down to the 38, think it was Sat aft but your partner said you were out somewhere. Aeroshell square was really packed, seemed to have
one of most everything.

As for date of medals minting, its unlikely, but there may be some record like a contract of when a batch was produced.

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Bill Greenwood
Spitfire N308WK

Speaking of dating medals aren't some of them engraved with the awardee's name and date of issue?

My grandfather served in the Canadian army in WW1 and his one medal actually had his name engraved along the edge, not on the obverse or reverse but along the actual vertical edge. Maybe that was a Canadian thing?

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"I can't understand it, I cut it twice and it's still too short!" Robert F. Dupre' 1923-2010 Go With God.

Randy you can get a idea by
1. type of broach
2. serial number stamped on the medal
3. difference look of the medal
4. the issue boxes are completely different
current issue uses a climped broach while more vintage
awards used a slot or a wrapped broached.
older medals just looked nicer and better made.
http://www.purplehearts.net/index.html

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Don't touch my junk!!

One important to note that's often ignored when discussing casualty figures is in which units those casualties occur. A WWII infantry division may have a paper strength of around 10-15,000. As an example, we'll say during a battle they suffer 35% casualties, or 3500-5250 troops. However, the problem is that the vast majority of the casualties will be in the 9 'line' infantry battalions (just under 900 troops each in 1945). Since the rifle strength of the division is about 8000 troops, the casualty rate for these units could run as high as 60%. In many battles that lasted more than a couple weeks, the cumulative attrition in these line companies could reach 100% or higher. The discrepancy becomes even more pronounced when one considers that assault divisions in many of the later Pacific battles were reinforced to strengths approaching 20,000 troop. Hardly any of those reinforcements would be infantry units, instead consisting of artillery, engineers (although many of them fought alongside the infantry), service and supply units.

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