Pearl Harbour. Why?

[Nonfiction]

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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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Indeed, but at the time no one realized that the battleship was obsolete. Furthermore, the industial capabilities of Japan and the US is extremely relevant, in that the US could produce basically an entire new fleet every year, while the Japs, lacking raw materials and as large an industrial base, were extremely hard pressed to replace losses. You seem to forget that the Jap carrier fleet was >>> the US Pacific carrier fleet. The carriers which were not in Pearl Harbor consisted of the Enterprize, Lexington, and Saratoga... 3 carriers. The Japs had 6 carriers in their Pearl Harbor task force alone, while simultaniously carrying out attacks on the British in Singapore and the US in the Phillipines.

Six months after Pearl Harbor, the Japs accomplished nearly all of their objectives, and had a fleet of 10 carriers + many BS + many support ships, vs an Allied fleet with 3 American carriers. However while the US rapidly spammed out more carriers, eventually overwhelming Japan, Japan could not replace its losses it took at battles such as Midway. American just won a war of attrition, whereas the Japanese thought they would not be able to withstand the losses.

[Nonfiction]

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And the Japanese didn't underestimate our industry, they got it just right. The admiral in charge thought that Pearl Harbor would give them an advantage in '42, and would allow them to face the U.S. on equal terms in '43. They knew that in a longer war the massive industrial capacity of the U.S. would prove decisive.

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Correct, they didn't underestimate the US industry, they underestimated the US desire for revenge. But while Yamamoto certainly was correct in believing that the war needed to be won by 42-43, I doubt even he would have believed the sheer amount of carriers America spammed out. Since he never got to see them that is, as we assassinated him fairly early in the war.

[Nonfiction]

From wiki:

Japan put particular emphasis on aircraft carriers. The Imperial Japanese Navy started the Pacific War with 10 aircraft carriers, the largest and most modern carrier fleet in the world at that time. There were seven American aircraft carriers at the beginning of the hostilities, only three of them operating in the Pacific; and three British aircraft carriers, of which a single one operated in the Indian Ocean[citation needed]. The IJN's two Shōkaku-class carriers were superior to any carrier in the world, until the wartime appearance of the American Essex-class aircraft carrier

[The once and future king]

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In operational terms Pearl Harbor was a stunning sucess for the Japanese. They only lost a few planes and caused massive damage. The operation went much better than they hoped.

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Oh rrrly? They could have lost no planes, and it would still have been a total operational failure. It was a stunning TACTICAL success but a terrible operational failure.

At the tactical level they inflicted casualties and hardly received any.

On the operational level they did hardly any real damage to USNavies ability to contest the Pacific with them by failing to sink a single carrier and hastened the Americans entrance into war.

Also, I am not saying US industrial might is irrelevant, I am saying that the damage done at PH is largely irrelevant so the Yanks didnt have much to rebiuld. America won its battles in its factories.

[Metric]

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Correct, they didn't underestimate the US industry, they underestimated the US desire for revenge. But while Yamamoto certainly was correct in believing that the war needed to be won by 42-43, I doubt even he would have believed the sheer amount of carriers America spammed out. Since he never got to see them that is, as we assassinated him fairly early in the war.

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Or in the words of Neal Stephenson:

One of his aides later crawled into his office – in the nauseatingly craven posture that minions adopt when they are about to make you really, really unhappy – and told him that there had been a mix-up in the embassy in Washington and that the diplomats there had not gotten around to delivering the declaration of war until well after the American Pacific Fleet had gone to the bottom.

To those Army [censored], this is nothing – just a typo, happens all the time. Isoroku Yamamoto has given up on trying to make them understand that the Americans are grudge-holders on a level that is inconceivable to the Nipponese, who learn to swallow their pride before they learn to swallow solid food. Even if he could get Tojo and his mob of shabby, ignorant thugs to comprehend how pissed off the Americans are, they’d laugh it off. What’re they going to do about it? Throw a pie in your face, like the Three Stooges? Ha, ha, ha! Pass the sake and bring me another comfort girl!

Isoroku Yamamoto spent a lot of time playing poker with Yanks during his years in the States, smoking like a chimney to deaden the scent of their appalling aftershave. The Yanks are laughably rude and uncultured, of course; this hardly constitutes a sharp observation. Yamamoto, by contrast, attained some genuine insight as a side-effect of being robbed blind by the Yanks at the poker table, realizing that the big freckled louts could be dreadfully cunning.

[Nonfiction]

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Also, I am not saying US industrial might is irrelevant, I am saying that the damage done at PH is largely irrelevant so the Yanks didnt have much to rebiuld. America won its battles in its factories.


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You need to understand that PH was actualy a massive success. It accomplished all of the Japanese objectives, they crippled the US Pacific fleet and allowed the Japs to take over all of the Pacific and create their "impenetrable barrier" of fortress islands. However, by destroying the US BS fleet, and, combined with what the Brits did to the Italians at Tarantino, displayed that carriers were > BS. So, instead of spamming BS, the US spammed carriers, Japs couldn't spam, gg. Carriers also require tons of planes, which the Japs couldn't spam, and tons of trained pilots, which the Japs couldn't replace (US pop is still like 2x-3x Japs at this point, and Japs are fighting major land war in China).

While PH is just as important for getting the US into the war as early as it did, it is even more important for changing the naval policies and tactics of the US. Even if there hadn't been a PH, the US undoubtedly would have still eventually entered the war in some fashion. However, without PH, America would have likely entered the war attempting to fight it as WW1 was fought, using fleets of mainly BS + support. This is what the British started the war doing in the Pacific, and got completely owned repeatedly, losing brand new BS and heavy cruisers to pure air attacks. This was actually how the Japs figured it would be fought, and they saved their BS fleet for a decisive battle with the US BS fleet for control of the Pacific (think Midway, except with BS not carriers). But by destroying the US BS fleet, this never happened, allowing the US to pwn with carriers. So, in essense, by succeeding in their goals at PH (destroy US BS fleet), they hastened their own downfall (US BS are replaced by more effective carriers).

[mjkidd]

The Japanese destroyed 5 battleships, 3 destroyers, and 200 aircraft at a cost of 30 planes. The Japanese percieved the operation to be a success, so I'm not sure how you could argue that it was an operational failure. In retrospect, it is obvious that the battleship losses were mostly irrevelant and the Imperial Navy would have been better served destroying the infastructure at Pearl. But the Japanese command gave priority to the destruction of the battleships.

By your argument, any strike on Pearl would have been an operational failure because it was mostly irrevelant to the outcome of the war. Even if all three fleet carriers had been caught in port and destroyed, and a third wave had damaged the infastructure at Pearl, the Japanese war effort would have been doomed.

[Felix_Nietzsche]

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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....

[Nonfiction]

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The Communist Chinese provoke a war with Japan at the Marco Polo Bridge.

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Source? It was a Jap plot to invade China again.
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After this Japan was locked in a GIANT war with the world's most populous nation. Japan took TWO million casualties in this war.

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Japan had already defeated China in multiple wars in the last 40 years, and easilly would have done so again. [ QUOTE ]
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.

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US still controlled Phillipines, had major economic interests in China and had several island bases in the Pacific (Guam being most important). Japan getting stronger = possible loss of Pacific interests.
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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....

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Yes, huge miscalculation, although FDR would have figured out a way to get us into the war no matter what, be it by some staged [censored] or through repeatedly sending passenger ships through warzones in order to get another Lusitania incident etc.

[mjkidd]

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But while Yamamoto certainly was correct in believing that the war needed to be won by 42-43, I doubt even he would have believed the sheer amount of carriers America spammed out. Since he never got to see them that is, as we assassinated him fairly early in the war.

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Yes, it never would have occured to him that we would build so many carriers, just because he would know that it would be such a massive waste. We didn't need 35 new carriers to crush Japan; 15 would have been far more than enough.