Talk:General Discussion/@comment-16545476-20140707120618/@comment-118.137.149.56-20140708013101

Kev, look up AL from the Japanese perspective. It was actually a large operation that involved quite a number of smaller ships (which is why it's often ignored) and airplanes fighting against ground-based US forces. AL was also a much longer IJN operation than Midway that ended just as catastrophically. Since all the targets in AL were ground-based airfields and the majority of ships were DDs and CLs, it's even technically possible to make crazy DD vs airfield hime maps out of them.

Considering that the first 3 maps of Spring event literally took FIVE DAYS for the IJN to complete in real life and historically represented a one-sided steamrolling of colonial navies, it's perfectly possible to make the much larger scale AL activities into 3 maps.

The real reason AL is often ignored in US sources is because it was the first and last time after the War of 1812 that a foreign nation successfully invaded and held US territory, and was therefore an embarrassment in the context of the glorious War in the Pacific narrative. More so because the US military command actually ignored Japanese advances for a long time and essentially abandoned Aleutian islanders to their fate. After the war there were demands for apology from those islanders who were US citizens, but this was largely buried in history along with AL. From the Japanese perspective, it was a major operation to secure the northern end of their empire.