Pearl Harbour. Why?

[natedogg]

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However they underestimated both the recovery time for the US industry to build a new fleet,

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This isnt that relevant. The Japs failed to catch any aircraft carriers in port. Thus in real terms they didnt really damage the US Navies ability to confront them in the Pacific. Thus the yanks didnt have to rebuild that much.

If the Admiral commanding the Japs had sent in a third? wave (as planned) they would have done so, but he got the fear about not having any air cover so kept it in reserve and retreated. In operational terms Pearl Harbour was a total feck up for the Japs.

The naval engagements of WW2 in the Pacific marked the end of the Battleship era, and the rise of the Carrier as the decisive naval weapons platform.

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Which is still true today, by the way, and is one of the main reasons why you should laugh heartily anytime you hear anyone speculating about the USA's declining military might.

natedogg

[BCPVP]

Wasn't there some incident recently where a (chineses?) sub tracked one of our carriers without detection?

[iversonian]

I thought Carriers, and pretty much all surface ships, were toast in any nuclear war. Which is why SSBNs are now considered the Navy's capital ships.

[BCPVP]

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I thought Carriers, and pretty much all surface ships, were toast in any nuclear war. Which is why SSBNs are now considered the Navy's capital ships.

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I thought we had a thread after the sub stalked our carrier and someone mentioned that some military guy said the carriers would likely have been sunk pretty quickly in a war with the soviets.

[vhawk01]

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I used to think that Japanese were some combination of crazy/dangerous/evil. After all, they attacked the Americans at Pearl Harbour for no reason. But does that really make a lot of sense? Why would they do such a thing?

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I don't think proper nouns are subject to varied spellings.

[AJW]

I'm surprised no ones mentioned it yet but their was a massive build up of US forces specifically B-17 bombers and incendiary bombs in early 41 which followed a November 1940 plan by Air force general Claire Lee Chennault to bomb out the industrial heart of the Japanese empire with incendiary bombs. This plan was reported by the 19th in the US media so the Japanese must have been aware of it.
The Japanese had to either abandon their colonial ambitions or strike a decisive early blow.

[Nonfiction]

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I'm surprised no ones mentioned it yet but their was a massive build up of US forces specifically B-17 bombers and incendiary bombs in early 41 which followed a November 1940 plan by Air force general Claire Lee Chennault to bomb out the industrial heart of the Japanese empire with incendiary bombs. This plan was reported by the 19th in the US media so the Japanese must have been aware of it.
The Japanese had to either abandon their colonial ambitions or strike a decisive early blow.

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Technically, Chennault was fighting for the Chinese at the time.

[APT]

Douglas MacArthur said at some comittee in US senate
"They feared that if those supplies were cut off, there would be 10 to 12 million people unoccupied in Japan. Their purpose, therefore, in going to war was largely dictated by security."

They were in the situation "Let blind eat you up or All-in with Junk."

[Mayor M. Barry]

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Seriously though, they were pretty [censored] crazy. At least the leaders were. Who wouldn't surrender after one of your cities and 100,000 people had just been wiped out by an a-bomb?

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If the tables were turned and Japan had acquired the Bomb but the U.S. didn't, and Japan used the bomb to Nuke New York and Washington, do you really think the U.S. would have surrendered?

[NewTeaBag]

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I used to think that Japanese were some combination of crazy/dangerous/evil. After all, they attacked the Americans at Pearl Harbour for no reason. But does that really make a lot of sense? Why would they do such a thing?

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Actually the way the Japanese behaved in China, Guam, Philipines, etc... was evil. Just google the Bataan Death March.

The war could have been EASILY avoided. Japan was surrounded by enemies (China, Russia) and the UK/Britain/France/Holland weren't happy about the Jap expansion into Manchuria.

The Communist Chinese provoke a war with Japan at the Marco Polo Bridge. After this Japan was locked in a GIANT war with the world's most populous nation. Japan took TWO million casualties in this war. So what does the USA do? They send arms and assistence to China (not exactly an act of a neutral nation). Then the USA conspires with several different nations to have an oil embargo of Japan. Without oil, Japan loses to China. If Japan was smart, they could have declared war on the Netherlands/UK and they seize the Dutch oil fields and British rubber. FDR would not have the votes to declare war. Japan crushes the UK Navy and wins the war. Instead they were extremely ignorant of US politics and thought they had to go to war with the USA. Had they understood they had a free hand against the UK/Netherlands. Then no war....

The attrocities the Japanese committed are well documented. The few Japanese that surrendered usually did so under the ruse to kill allied soldiers with grenades and hidden weapons. Because of this, US subs would typically machine guns Japanese troops in the water after sinking a troop transports at sea (they were dead men anyway, sharks and the sea would have killed them. No US press around to wring their hands).

I think history shows FDR was trying to provoke a war with Germany and Japan. FDR gave the order to Admiral King to sink Nazi submarines WELL BEFORE Dec 7, 1941. Hitler ignored these attacks for a while but decided to join Japan after Pearl harbor,The oil embargo was organized by FDR to force Japan's hand.... And it worked very well....

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I think nonfiction and others did a brilliant job discussing the facts surrounding PH.

I would like to see some documentation for the bolded claim though. As an exsubmariner I call major BS on routinely machine gunning Japanese in the water.