One thing that no one has mentioned but emphasizes how the Japanese were fixated on resources is that on the one occasion that they actually bombed the US mainland the target they chose were some forests in Oregon chosen because wood was so scarce and so important in Japan. I think a few picnickers were injured. There is a museum in Klamath Falls, OR, where this is described in more detail.
Well remember, one of the most important objectives of the attack on pearl harbor wasn’t to disable ships: it was to bomb the living s**t out of the strategic oil reserves, which would’ve forced the US to spend months carting new oil into hawai’i on cargo vessels in order to prepare their fleet for a long-term campaign.
My understanding was that there were to be three waves of bombers, but after the second wave the commander of the Japanese fleet chose to pull out. Apparently their losses increased sharply between the first and second waves, and since the americans were responding faster than he had planned, he was worried that waiting to refuel the bombers and prepare for a third attack would give the american navy time to locate the invasion fleet.
It may have been “strategically untenable thing for the USA to allow” but with the then mood of the US People it could *not *“have resulted in immediate war”. Any attempt by FDR to get Congress to declare war to protect the Dutch *colonies *would have been laughed out of Capitol hill. He couldn’t get support for a war to protect the British or the French - nor the Netherlands homeland.
The mood of the Americans at that point in time was pro-Ally but very Isolationist. We were conned into WWI, we weren’t about be be conned into “another foriegn war of aggression”.
If Americans weren’t going to support a war to save the Dutch homeland (or the Begians, Polish, Czechoslavakian, French, Luxemburg, Chinese, and so forth) do you think we would have supported a war to save some Dutch Colonial oilwells? :rolleyes: :dubious:
IIRC, Battleship Row and the airfields were only secondary targets for the raid at best. They had to be taken out quickly because they would be the biggest sources of immediate opposition to the attack itself Kinda like how, starting around the Vietnam Conflict, the US Navy and US Air Force had specially trained and equipped aircrews who specifically hunted down AA sites to clear a path for other aircraft.
The primary targets were the carriers (the best option for an immediate retaliation) and the oil reserves (necessary for any sort of counter offensive or even extensive defensive operations), and I recall the submarine base at Pearl was of some high importance too (especially in hindsight, with the damage US subs did in the Pacific during the war).
IIRC, there were also strategic concerns. Those six carriers and their escorts were needed elsewhere, as Japan was attacking on multiple fronts at the time, and there was still a major American military presence in the Philippines, not to mention the continued fighting in China.
As far as the status of the US military in the 1930s and early 1940s, I’ve got a book about the US Air Force, going from the Wright Flyers though into “Modern Day”, which was the late 80’s or early 90’s when the book was published. There was a bit talking about the time period right before WWII, and the big picture for the beginning of the chapter showed a guy flying in the fearsome Boeing P-26 Peashooter, which were still in service as late as 1941.
Most of the “outdated” American fighters seen at the beginning of WWII, the P-40 Warhawk, the P-39 Aircobra, and the F4-F-2 Wildcat all come to mind, had entered service very recently (indeed, the Warhawk and the Wildcat were still in production at war’s end, IIRC). Even then, on a one-to-one basis, planes like the Warhawk were actually rather well matched against the Japanese fighters, usually being faster, better armed, and more rugged, their big disadvantage being badly outmatched pilots. They improved the pilots, and they improved the planes on top of that. The US military was able to improve it’s equipment in a stunningly fast period of time, in some cases, planes jumped in capabilities between design revisions (the P-47 Thunderbolt increased massively in size and speed, the F4-F Wildcat went from a biplane to a monoplane between design variants, and so on)
Do you have a cite for these claims? I have always read that the battleships and carriers were the main targets of the attack.
here is what Wkiki has to say
I concur: Carriers, then BB, then oil reserves etc.
I agree that it was a strategic error to not go for a 3rd air strike, but that’s becuase we know *now *that it would have been unlikely for the two US carriers to have been able to hit Nagumo’s force. But if the US carriers had been right there, and ready and had caught the Strikeforce with their planes getting refuled and reloaded with bombs, it might have been Midway very early.
Various things I read as a kid, but it kinda makes sense that you’d concentrate initially on those things that can most hamper your initial attack before moving on to the long-term important stuff.
That said, you have a cite, and I do not, so uhm… *LOOK! TURTLES! *
A little more from that same Wiki link
So the sub base was not on the target list, and the machine shops and tank farm were on the never launched third wave.
As the tour buss operator at Pearl said, they missed hitting the biggest gas station in the world. 
Eh, Yamamoto was definitely levelheaded and a realist, and definitely directed Japanese naval strategy. But as far as “grand” strategy, he was not in charge of the army, and there were definitely constraints on his planning. Remember he planned the attack on Pearl (along with Genda, if I am recalling the name correctly) but he opposed attacking the United States at all and was quite explicit in telling his superiors it would be a mistake – the famous “I will run wild for six months to a year, but after that I have no confidence” statement. Pearl was Dec 7th, Midway (the definitive end of Japan “running wild”) was June 3-4…almost precisely six months later.
The Japanese naval strategy was based on land-based airpower. At the start of the war, land-based air was generally superior to carrier air, for several reasons. Carrier aircraft had to have extremely rugged landing gear – so much so that the resulting performance penalty meant carrier fighters never quite matched the finest land-based fighters. Carrier air capacity was limited – not only do carriers hold fewer planes than an island does, you can’t add more planes to them in a crisis, like you can surge an island base. And of course carriers run low on fuel and can be sunk.
The planned perimeter of island bases that could operate mutually-supporting air units would in theory prove an amazingly tough nut to crack. Where it fell down was in underestimating three key areas: US fleet building capacity, US pilot training and replacement, and the depredations of US submarines (making resupply of the far-flung islands a nightmare).
It wasn’t crazy for the Japanese to underestimate these things. US shipbuilding capacity (and the determination to maximize it) became one of the wonders of the world – nobody had seen anything like it, and the US was still coming out of a depression when shooting started. Japanese pilot training emphasized elite forces formed by a long and arduous process with many washing out. These pilots were fabulous, but the replacement rate was totally inadequate for serious battle casualties. The Americans took a less romantic and more practical view; American aces were yanked off the battle line (usually under protest) and sent home to train more pilots, instead of being asked to win the war single-handedly. And the US had been a major international force urging the restriction and limitation of submarine warfare – who would have expected them to declare unrestricted submarine warfare immediately upon entry into the war?
Yamamoto had been educated in America, and he knew the score…his famous quote about the automobile factories of Detroit and oilfields of Texas shows that. But few others did, or had any reason to expect they were awakening Godzilla.
Sailboat
OK, what IS his quote about the automobile factories and the oilfields? I’m familiar with the quote about the sleeping dragon, and the quote about a rifle behind every blade of grass, but not the one with factories and oilfields.
I’m back from playing with the turtles.
While we are at it, can I hear the one about the blades of grass?
. The commander of the Imperial Japanese Navy … in 1941 stated, “Anyone who has seen the auto factories of Detroit and the oil fields of Texas knows that Japan lacks the national power for a naval race with America.”
Reminds me of a Herman Goering quote: The Americans cannot build aeroplanes. They are very good at refrigerators and razor blades.
I would never invade the United States, there would be a gun behind every blade of grass.
Incidentally, Yamamoto not only went to school in the US, he was an alumnus of he US Naval War College (as well as Harvard). IIRC, another admiral (Nagumo?) went to Princeton.
I don’t disagree with this or the rest of what you wrote. I didn’t attempt to further answer the OP because I thought you and Polycarp had done a good job. (Later, I saw some good fill-in posts following my post that I made me think “I wish I had said that.”)
In my post I was reacting to your correction of the OP:
The Japanese were not so much “bogged down” in China as they had taken as much land as they needed for the resources they wanted.
I am not sure why you felt the need to offer that correction, as we both seem to agree that it is not the OP’s question. I am not sure why I felt the need to offer a correction to your correction, which gives you a little TMI on me.
But in fact, I don’t think that this line by you is correct and explained why. I think it is always fair in this forum to be pedantic and if a guy in GQ says “the Japanese weren’t bogged down in China” when discussing anything, say a 1920-style Death Rays, it is legit to say “I wish I had one to destroy the Moon. BTW the Japanese were indeed bogged down in China”.
Midway, along with several other Japanese defeats, resulted from, to be blunt, Japanese tactical stupidity. They devised a strategy for winning – but it depended on their assumptions (like not being sighted) and was too intricate to work right in “the fog of battle.”
I read this history of the battle of Midway, and I don’t understand why the japanese sent a diversionary force (under Admiral Hosogaya) to attack the Alieutian Islands. The battle group (including a carrier) could have saved the day at Midway-instead, it was 2000 miles away!
I also don’t understand why the japanese didn’t use their excellent long-range submarines-these could have waited outside san Diego, to sink the US carriers. In short, I think the defeat at Midway really rattled the Japanese-they forgot sound strategic thinking, and went off on tangets-I fail to see how the capture of Guadacanal Island would help them 9or the capture of Attu, Kiska, etc.!
For the Japanese to almost completely scale back their imperial ambitions (in the face of an
impending shortage of oil and other raw materials) was unthinkable to them. Withdraw out
of China? Never happen. They had to attack and gain control of the Dutch East Indies
or lose significant amounts of face.
If there wasn’t a Pearl Harbor I do wonder what would have precipitated US entry (absent
other direct attacks on US interests such as the Philippines). At what point exactly would the
American people have thrown off the mantle of isolationism and declared war? When the
Philippines were completely surrounded by occupied Japanese garrisons?
Wolverines!
From the interrogation of Captain Taisuke Ito, on the staff of the Commander Fifth Fleet, by Allied forces.
That bomb–an incendiary device–was carried by a balloon, a cheap and simple way to strike at the American mainland and maybe cause some morale effect. It landed wherever the wind took it. Landing in the forest wasn’t deliberate.
From what I understand, the Aleutian campaign also lead to the Americans capturing a nearly-intact A6M Zero. A Japanese fighter pilot had some sort of problems (I think his engine was damaged) so he tried to do an emergency landing, The landing gear got stuck in the ground, and the plane flipped forward, killing the pilot but leaving the plane mostly intact. The Americans found it and were able to take it home for extensive study, designing the F6F Hellcat and F4U Corsair to capitalize on the Zero’s weaknesses.