If the Enterprise, Lexington and Saratoga were at Pearl Harbor

Great Debates
41

(My emphasis.)

China was only part of it. Japan’s goal starting in the '30s and continuing into the early '40s was to become the great power in Asia and the US stood in her way.

Do you remember all of the motivational speeches were the speaker says you can accomplish anything if you try hard enough? Don’t believe them. That was the ultra nationalistic Japan. They believed in their version of Manifest Destiny and that the Yamato race was to rule that part of the globe.

It was inevitable that Japan’s core interests – to completely dominate Asia – would lead to conflict with the US. It was also inevitable that because of Japan’s lack of natural resources, ranging not only for oil and rubber but also such commodities as sugar and even rice where that nation was dependent on imports, and her precarious position as is island nation, Japan could not allow the USN to become too strong. In fact, one of her serious handicaps at the end of the war was that among industrial nations, Japan alone was dependent upon ocean shipping for domestic freight, with sugar gown in the Ryuku Islands and rice and coal being sent from Hokkaido.

The two countries had become real rivals in the '30s, and public polls from the early 1940s reflected this. While most Americans did not want to get involved in another land war mess in Europe, more and more were starting to believe that there would be war with Japan.

Because of the escalating arms race in which first Japan had started and the US had followed with the Two Oceans Act, the longer the former waited to attack, the stronger the later became. Japanese naval strategists were arguing in fall of '41 that they could wait no longer. They were correct. As thatguy pointed out, the States had 11 carriers in construction in winter of that year, while Japan only had two(?). It simply was not an option for them to wait a couple of years.

The US had elected to start fortifying its possessions in the Pacific. While previous plans had been for the US to batten down the hatches and wait for the buildup, by summer of '41 the plan was changing to actively protect the islands. As was pointed out in the other thread: “Lexington was delivering Marine fliers to Midway, and Enterprise was returning from a similar mission to Wake. Saratoga was picking up her air group in San Diego.”

[aside] One problem Dugout Doug faced was the changing goal. Were the initial plan had been to retreat to Bataan, to hold up. However, by fall (or as early as summer, I don’t recall offhand) of the fateful year, the Army was actively changing making plans to defend the archipelago. And while this in no way should be taken as a defense of that ego-driven man, MacArthur was caught attempting something which they were not ready for. Had they stuck with the original plan, they would have been much more likely to have brought along enough rice to feed their troops and would not have been required to surrender so soon. [/aside]

The problem was not that the US military was unaware of the imperial country’s desire to start a war, but that our side knew they couldn’t get ready until 1942 and assumed that their enemy would cooperate.

I know that it’s not a satisfactory answer and that there should be a way to figure out a win. But sometimes life says no. The only way to Carnegie Hall is to practice, practice, practice. The Davids beat the Goliaths in Hollywood and The Mouse that Roared is fiction.

Or what he said.

Do you disagree with Dissonance’s point that the US would have just transferred the Atlantic carriers sooner?

42

Is that from a Stephen Wright routine?

The only viable strategy I see that had a ghost of a chance of working was to turn the three Yamatos into either 3 Shinano CVs (as in no crap conversions with relatively tiny air groups, but the Japanese equivalent to the US Midways), or 5 Shokakus. Overwhelm the US with huge naval air groups (including blasting all Pearl harbor facilities & tank farms to ruin)…but all that might buy you an extra year or two if you are lucky.

43

Oddly, however, neither Churchill, Eisenhower or Tojo thought that the US victory was inevitable. So, the guys actually in charge of their various nations thought differently than you. So, perhaps, since you aren’t a military leader, maybe, just maybe your opinion is wrong.

Like, I said- saying “no way” isn’t helpful and doesn’t answer the question. What strategy had a better chance?

If the Instruction tell you to pick the answer that is most right, the question is “2+2=?”
and the answers are:
A. 0
B. 3.999999
C. Pi
D. none of your damn business.

You pick B.

44

It is certainly possible that this might have happened, but then again as I noted earlier if carriers were transferred from the Atlantic sooner than historically in order to make good the losses, the US would be back to 4 carriers in the Pacific in March 1942, the same number as were historically available in the Pacific in March 1942.

Another possibility for early loss of US carriers was at Wake Island; after the initial Japanese landing attempt was repulsed the Lexington and Saratoga took part in an attempted relief operation which was called off when the second landing occurred on December 23rd. The carriers Hiryu and Soryu had been detached to support the second landing, and the Saratoga was scheduled to reach Wake Island on the 24th. Had timetables run differently, it is entirely possible that a carrier vs. carrier action could have occurred, and the US might have come off on the losing end of it.

You’re just demonstrating a further lack of understanding of reality with answers like these. Just don’t bomb those ships? Ship identification by pilots was notoriously poor during WWII, the highly trained pilots of the Kido Butai piled on a fleet oiler and a destroyer on the first day of the Battle of the Coral Sea having misidentified them as a battleship and an aircraft carrier. Yet you expect Japanese pilots to be able to avoid attacking US destroyers mixed up with British and Dutch ships by identifying them and ‘just not bombing them’? I’m also not discounting wargames; I’m discounting your ability to discern what was factually possible from what it is possible to do in Axis&Allies because it doesn’t even attempt to be historically accurate or model logistics.

Wrong, the strategy you propose stands absolutely no chance as it is utterly unrealistic. It is as plausible as Japan deploying a laser to the moon and incinerating US cities one by one.

Are you serious? The US must leave since it’s a neutral power? I hate to break it to you but Japan didn’t bother with the diplomatic niceties of delivering an actual declaration of war before attacking.

Factually incorrect. The submarine offensive (which, by the way, wasn’t interdicting anything near 90% of raw materials in spring 1944) had nothing to do with why the Japanese were starving. The Japanese had considered advancing into India from Burma in 1942 but rejected the idea for the very reasons that doomed the attack in 1944 to failure: it was logistically impossible. The terrain is absolutely horrible, there was no logistical infrastructure to move the supplies over, it was impossible to live off the land, and Japan lacked the logistical assets. They were actually better positioned logistically in 1944 than in 1942 for what it was worth with the construction of the Burma Railway at the cost of tens of thousands of lives. The problem wasn’t getting supplies to Burma; it was getting them from Burma to troops advancing into India.

You’d do well to read up on the submarine offensive as well, it most certainly was not sinking every merchant ship in sight for the three years of 1941-44. Defective torpedoes plagued US submarine operations for all of those years.

45

Yes, they’d easily be able to “avoid attacking US destroyers mixed up with British and Dutch ships” as you just don’t attack while they are mixed up. Once war starts, the US ships must leave.

*And yet, you have no better answer. *

Yes, it must. Neutral powers can only stay in ports for 24 hours and only under specific circumstances. If this would work, Roosevelt would have just mixed a few US ships into every British port.

True, Japan didn’t always bother with diplomatic niceties, but there’s no need to sneak attack that pitiful little task force. Just wait 24 hours or until it steams out to sortie.

Yeah, well my cite from the **Chief of Naval Operations:
Submarine Warfare Division **disagrees with your citeless opinion.

46

I did have the stipulation that assumes war was declared in December '41.

47

It looks like someone stole parts of a Wright routine or wrong something similar. I just googled “questions with no good answers” or something like that.

Japan couldn’t have converted the battleships that soon. Things had taken a nasty turn in the summer of '41 and they needed to fight by the year end because of the weather in southeast Asia would not wait for spring.

I had previously also believed that Japan had blundered by not attacking the tank farms and harbor facilities, but read a summary of an excellent analysis which showed that the Kido Butai did not carry enough ordinance to do significant damage to the later and that the Zeros 7.7 mm guns were not AP, and would not have penetrated the former. Even had they destroyed the tanks, the States was building an underground storage starting in 1940. Here is a presentationdiscussing this.

The IJN did more than it could have reasonably expected in the early stages of the war. It was just tasked with too much.

DrDeth, some people really enjoy getting into “debates” which are indistinguishable from simply shouting the same thing louder and louder.

I don’t.

opinion noted.

And, as I noted above, the navy was really pissed, for want of a better description, with Japan after the dust settled on the morning of December 7th. As I posted earlier in a reconsideration from the earlier speculation, they wanted revenge and were going to get it.

48

Actually, my actual words were " …maybe, just maybe your opinion is wrong. " That little cut you made is quite deceptive.

And, indeed, since your posts are notably short on facts & cites and long on you stating your opinion over & over & over as a fact- does the term “pot calling the kettle black” mean anything to you?

When come back, bring cites.

49

Opinion noted.

50

The Japanese had a curious blind spot about logistic warfare, even when they were suffering from it being used against them. They just didn’t seem to grasp the concept that you could destroy a military force by attacking its support system.

Pearl Harbor was an example of this. The fact is that it apparently never occurred to the Japanese to attack the tank farms and harbor facilities. Documents from 1941 show that these were barely even on the list of targets. The oil tanks were listed only as a possible target for the seventh bombing run if all the other better targets had been destroyed.

51

I think submarine warfare is the classic example. Their naval doctrine called for the subs to be used to attack and weaken the US fleet for the Final Showdown fight and didn’t pay attention to what the Germans were doing in the Atlantic. At the start of the war, their torpedoes were much superior to the US, even if the Mark 14 had not had all of the technical issues. They were designed to hunt bear, as it were, and built well.

But they never got the idea that the war was going to be a long, drawn out affair, so consequently logistics were neglected, and never really was considered even later on.

52

I think they also really underestimated some technological developments. In 1941, they were the kings of naval night action. Torpedoes are great for this, because your enemy cannot see them in the dark to avoid them. Japan’s torpedoes were fast, long ranged and powerful.

The only problem with this is that once radar fire control became a thing, Japan’s night fighting advantage was diminished. That’s why I think their navy was a paper tiger- it couldn’t stand up to attrition, tech, or tactics.

Tactics: Engrossed with the “decisive battle” concept in a world far more industrialized.

Attrition: Couldn’t replace their losses. Japan actually built relatively few warships during WW2. Experienced Pilots could not be replaced either. Japan actually ran out of aircrews and carrier aircraft before they ran out of carriers. Ozawa’s Carrier fleet in the Phillipines campaign was actually a diversion force that had a compliment of only 60 planes.

Tech: Radar and plane development lagged behind the allies. Their navy and army didn’t cooperate, which wasted resources.

53

Moderator Action

Since there seems to be a lot of debate going on here, let’s move this to GD.

Moving thread from General Questions to Great Debates.

54

True. The really amazing thing is they never figured it out during the course of the war. You’d think they would have noticed how much difficulty American subs were causing them by cutting off the supply to their island bases and applied that knowledge by using the same tactics against American bases.

55

I dunno. Which captain are we talking about?

56

Pike, Duh…

57

You really just don’t get it, do you? The war starts when Japan attacks British and Dutch possessions. US warships are going to be bombed when Japan does this.

Actually, yes I do. Japan deploys a laser on the moon and incinerates US cities one by one. It is entirely as plausible as your idea that Japan could simply march across India and then conquer Iran and Saudi Arabia (where, again, there was not much oil to be had in 1941). Japan didn’t have a viable military solution to the problem it faced in 1941. That you can come up with an answer that is absurd and utterly outside the realms of the possible doesn’t make it a better answer. It makes it a non-answer worthy only of science fiction. A Japanese moon laser is literally just as plausible.

Horseshit. You’re confusing the need for a warship of a belligerent nation to put back to sea from a neutral port within 72 hours or be interred for the duration of the war. See the Admiral Graf Spee and the Battle of the River Plate:

Umm, no, you just didn’t actually read your cite, as nowhere does it say anything remotely like “Because it was 1944. The American Submarine offensive had been sinking every merchant ship in sight for three years now. 90% of raw materials were being interdicted.” You are clearly entirely ignorant on the submarine campaign if you are unaware of the numerous and massive defects in the Mark-14 torpedo which crippled the ability of US submarines to effectively conduct operations from 1941-44 and which most certainly kept them from sinking every merchant ship on sight. It also has absolutely no relevance whatsoever to the logistical problems of invading India from Burma and why Japanese troops were starving to death in India when they tried it. As I said, the problem was not getting the supplies to Burma; it was moving them from Burma to troops advancing into India. The Japanese troops weren’t starving when they were in Burma. The problem is the terrain on the India-Burma border was a hilly monsoon jungle with no decent roads to speak of and the lack of logistical abilities in the Japanese Army to try to compensate for this.

58

True (well, partially), but not accurate. There’s a couple of major quibbles with this easy reading. The major one is that the USN would with near certainty not have moved Ranger. It didn’t in October-November 1942, when it preferred to keep a barely operable Enterprise alone in the South Pacific (granted, the exigencies of TORCH played a role); nor in early 1943, when it rather loaned the Royal Navy’s Victorious. Ranger wasn’t a fully capable fleet carrier: among her major flaws were a complete lack of protection, no storage for aerial torpeodes, a slow maximum speed, and operated badly in the Pacific swells. She was quite a bit worse than Wasp, herself only moved to the Pacific after Midway and the loss of Yorktown.
Secondly, Hornet could hardly have been fitted out any quicker–indeed, as it was, she was not a truly serviceable carrier (especially with regards to her air group) until September-October 1942, as her performance at Midway amply showed. Yorktown and Wasp would really have had to hold the line alone until at least late May, early June.

Now, what the consequences of such a re-structured force would have been, I guess your opinion is really as good as mine. I think that without reserves, the Pacific Fleet would have been more careful about Coral Sea, for example–where Nimitz had really wanted to deploy all four available carriers.

59

I’ll admit to not getting this. Are we in a hypothetical here? Because no US warships were bombed in British or Dutch possessions when the Japanese began their war–in fact, saving Hong Kong, no major British or Dutch base was bombed, period, on December 7th. The movement of a division of fourstackers from the Asiatic Fleet to Singapore had been discussed, but never undertaken. The only U.S. forces in foreign ports were the destroyers at Tarakan and Balikpapan, neither of which was bombed, nor even attacked until much later. So the problem becomes: how does one justify keeping one’s warships in threatened enemy ports when one knows a state of war exists? And: will anyone take damage in that situation to be worth a declaration of war?

While I agree that Japan could not have occupied India or parts beyond (it had, I would say, pretty much reached its natural limits by the time of Midway, give or take a few South Pacific islands), I’ve a hard time seeing the idea that there was no viable military solution to its problems in 1941 as anything but informed by hindsight–or perhaps, at least largely true only in hindsight. The Japanese plan was, as I have said, a big gamble: establish a perimeter, let the U.S. come, trade blood for space, force the U.S. to acknowledge that it does not want to pay the price, then negotiate–give the U.S. everything it wants, but keep the DEI. Likely? No. Possible? Perhaps. Of course, as we know, by the time the U.S. offensive rolled around, the Japanese were thoroughly incapable of extracting the kinds of losses that they would have required. But could they have foreseen that in 1941? There was a whole nexus of technological advances, faulty Japanese doctrine, superior U.S. doctrine, tactical and strategical errors (especially at Guadalcanal), lower DEI productivity than expected, etc., etc., that combined to render the Japanese position ultimately impossible. But how much of that could they have foreseen in 1941?

60

Heck, Japan could have made political donations to American parties, candidates, or political groups that were encouraging isolation (well, to the extent the campaign finance laws of 1941 would allow) and the money would have been better spent. Their position was comparable to the Confederacy - the only way they can win is if the other side never starts fighting.