You might want to read my first post, which was aimed directly at answering the OP, instead of the one responding to a later question. What you quoted doesn’t “adequately explain” that because the explanation is in my first post, and having someone quote one of my posts to chide me for not ‘adequately explaining’ something that I already offered an explanation for earlier is rather annoying.
What’s your source for that? I’ve never seen that theory (that the Japanese thought the US was demanding that they leave Manchuria and not just China) advanced before in any of my reading.
Kinda testy, aren’t we? I didn’t chide you or anyone else, I was just pointing out that there was something missing from your post. It’s also rather annoying to be greeted like this, instead of assuming an honest mistake, but who am I to judge?
Without checking, I believe this was both in Bix (op. cit.), and in Dorothy Borg’s Pearl Harbor as History, the details of which I can give you if you so desire. I also think it is in Roosvelt: From Munich to Pearl Harbor, the author of which escapes me right now. If you desire, I can check, though last time, it took me awhile to find it.
I was going to tackle this “way back when” in this thread. It’s hard to swallow that the US had any fixed notions about what Japan should be able to keep. There’s a difference between what FDR and various diplomats might have hoped for, and what they would have settled for.
I take as an example Iraq, today. If Hussein suddenly decided to let in UN inspectors, the international pressure being applied on him would drop dramatically. If he sent significant aid to the Kurds, opposition would drop to about zero. His long-term intentions wouldn’t matter. Everybody would be happy if he would just stop being such a threat to everyone around him.
If the Japanese appeared to be sincerely apologetic… while they were building battleships… the case against them would have been quite weak, compared to that against the Nazis.
Even granting that there was a pattern of bringing the ships in for Sunday, it’s difficult to see how the Japanese could have ‘expected a return’ of even one. The only reliable source of intelligence the Japanese had in Hawaii was people on the ground who had both eyeballs and access to telephones, and on that reliance, they knew nothing of the whereabouts of the carriers, except that the carriers weren’t at Pearl. The basis of my paradox is the fact that, as far as Nagumo and Yamamoto knew, they were launching a carrier-based attack at a moment when they knew there were no carriers at Pearl. Yes, had the Enterprise been on schedule, she would have been on the scene, but the Japanese had no way of knowing that.
I think I said that the predominant theory in naval planning circles of the time – on both sides – was that the battleships were the prime movers. Given that, certainly it made sense for the Japanese to destroy the battleships based at Pearl. The paradox I proposed had less to do with the predominance of any type of fleet and more to do with the historical fact of obliteration of one type of fleet with a completely different type. Wouldn’t the very success of the attack point its victims toward adopting – RTFN!!! – this same strategy, thereby rendering useless the battlewagons?
Here we venture into GD territory… I think the adherents of carrier strategy in both navies gained a lot of ground on 12/7/41. I think if the Japanese had any carrier combat experience prior to that date, they were ahead of the U.S., which had zilch. Japan’s massing of carriers without radar cover worked like a charm at Pearl Harbor, and flew like a lead balloon at Midway, but the difference had less to do with tactics than it had to do with intelligence and the obvious political difference – Pearl Harbor was an attack without benefit of a declaration of hostility, while Midway was a meeting of declared combatants. Finally, I have to question your characterization of Saratoga’s mission as a “fully… developed standard carrier group.” Your description implies much more planning and design than I suspect took place. I think perhaps the Pearl Harbor example of ‘How To Whack Hell Out Of My Enemy With A Few Hundred Carrier-Borne Airplanes,’ coupled with the fact that the vaunted battleships were still being hoisted out of the mud at PH, led to the hasty formation of the carrier groups.
No, actually I don’t think so. I’m not QUITE sure if your point is that that Japanese had adopted a winning strategy and were now giving it away by using it in this fashion. IF that is the case (and apologies if it isn’t), the main problem with the idea is that the Japanese had not in fact adopted a winning strategy; they had merely made a tactical decision fitting a specific tactical problem. Otherwise, even vaunted Yamamoto still clung to the battleship as the final arbiter of sea power, as witnessed during Midway and during the Guadalcanal campaign. Carriers were used by the Japanese NOT because they were felt to be the most powerful warships around, but because they were, in Japanese strategy, the right type of warship to employ against other carriers. Whereas in the U.S. Navy, Pearl Harbor broke the sort-of balance between air power and surface power advocates, and definitely made the carrier no. 1.
What I meant to say with the SARATOGA example is exactly what you say, in fact. I may have phrased it poorly. SARATOGA sailed at the center of a typical 1942 carrier battle group, because the design of that force had been created before; the Americans were operating in formations created in peacetime, and found them useful in wartime. Planning and design took place BEFORE December 7th. You are quite right that the actual mission was VERY hastily organized, but the formations and tactics employed were not new.
As for Kido Butai’s six / four carriers in one formation, I re-read Sunburst yesterday, and found that indeed, I was slightly misrepresenting the Japanese concept – for a carrier-on-carrier duel, the Japanese would have split the formation into two two-carrier formations. So they knew their formation was faulty for such a mission, and employed it only when they believed there would be no interference from carriers.
No, actually I don’t think so. I’m not QUITE sure if your point is that that Japanese had adopted a winning strategy and were now giving it away by using it in this fashion. IF that is the case (and apologies if it isn’t), the main problem with the idea is that the Japanese had not in fact adopted a winning strategy; they had merely made a tactical decision fitting a specific tactical problem. Otherwise, even vaunted Yamamoto still clung to the battleship as the final arbiter of sea power, as witnessed during Midway and during the Guadalcanal campaign. Carriers were used by the Japanese NOT because they were felt to be the most powerful warships around, but because they were, in Japanese strategy, the right type of warship to employ against other carriers. Whereas in the U.S. Navy, Pearl Harbor broke the sort-of balance between air power and surface power advocates, and definitely made the carrier no. 1.
What I meant to say with the SARATOGA example is exactly what you say, in fact. I may have phrased it poorly. SARATOGA sailed at the center of a typical 1942 carrier battle group, because the design of that force had been created before; the Americans were operating in formations created in peacetime, and found them useful in wartime. Planning and design took place BEFORE December 7th. You are quite right that the actual mission was VERY hastily organized, but the formations and tactics employed were not new.
As for Kido Butai’s six / four carriers in one formation, I re-read Sunburst yesterday, and found that indeed, I was slightly misrepresenting the Japanese concept – for a carrier-on-carrier duel, the Japanese would have split the formation into two two-carrier formations. So they knew their formation was faulty for such a mission, and employed it only when they believed there would be no interference from carriers.
Simul-post forgiven. Well said and eloquently stated!
I’m aware that the carrier-force tactics so quickly adopted by the U.S. in 1942 had their origins in pre-war planning, but I think it’s relevant to point out that none of these tactics had been proven in war. And I think it’s correct to say that such tactics met with the disapproval of the majority of the naval ass-kickers of the day. It is a remarkably fortunate fact that the whole concept worked! I sometimes wonder if the destruction/disabling of the bulk of the battleships at PH wasn’t a blessing in disguise.
And the gun boys (BB) were still heavy up there at the start of the War. While the Battle of the Coral Sea definitely demonstrated the concept, I think Midway put NAVAIR around the bend.
Though US battleships, in what few engagements they got to use, actually kicked Japanese booty. Even with the Jap ships’ better night fighting experience, we were able to cream them near Saipan.
What I read some time ago was that an Admiral Richardson had “attacked” Pearl Harbor during exercises, coming in from the northeast, virtually the same direction the Japanese did, and completely surprising the lax defenses there. They were angry at him for this.
Years later, there is evidence that he had some communication with Roosevelt as to this possibility.
According to Day of Deceit by Robert B. Stinnett (2000) “Free Press”, Roosevelt set Pearl up as a sitting duck, provoking the Japanese attack so that we would declare war. Stinnett has evidence that Roosevelt knew where the Japanese carriers were from British intelligence reports.
Stinnett’s thesis is that Roosevelt knew we weren’t going to overcome isolationist foot dragging unless a bold stroke pulled us in. He had staged several things in the Philippines, but none stirred any attention. He took every means to provoke the Japanese, especially with the oil emgargo from Indonesia. Short supplies of fuel hurt the axis more than any other single weapon.
In 1940, he, Richardson, and some other admirals figured that Pearl was a likely target so they, in effect, dangled it as bait in front of the Japanese, pretending not to know where the fleet was was, in actuality, British intelligence was tracking the Japanese carriers all along and passing that info directly to Gen. Marshall and Roosevelt.
Nagumo’s reluctance to launch a third wave was due, in part, to a belief that the Americans were waiting in ambush somewhere, because it was too incredible to believe that it could have been that easy.
Yamamoto knew that it was a hollow victory since they failed to neutralize ANY of our carriers.
Richardson didn’t, but before him Pearl Harbor was once attacked in an exercise, handled roughly and deemed severely damaged. No-one was angry at anyone, as that was the whole point of the game, to find out what was possible.
I wince everytime I hear the words “Stinnett” and “evidence” combined in a single paragraph. Stinnett has no evidence whatsoever to prove his outrageous thesis. His book is a good example of interesting new facts so construed as to ruin their inherent worth by the multitude of assumptions, careless conclusions, and downright falsehoods.
Stinnett is an unreliable source; Roosevelt did not “state things” in the Philippines – the closest he came to doing that was sending out the schooner Lanikai into the path of the Japanese Malaya invasion force, hoping both to gather intelligence and to get a reason for going to war. Roosevelt did not provoke the Japanese with an oil embargo from Indonesia (by far the looniest suggestion in this post): Roosevelt reacted with an embargo of American oil to the Japanese invasion of Indochina; the Dutch, to whom Indonesia then belonged, were in talks with the Japanese about further deliveries of oil well into November 1941, and in any event, decided upon their trade themselves.
Oh, and Stinnett has no real evidence whatsoever that the British were tracking the Japanese carriers in the North Pacific; and since the Japanese were maintaining radio silence, there was no way that British even COULD have tracked them.
Admiral Richardson would have been the last to dangle anything in front of anyone, least of all Pearl Harbor as a bait. Richardson, in fact, had concluded that Pearl Harbor was a “damned mouse-trap” in the event of an attack, and wanted the fleet removed to San Diego, whence it had come. Roosevelt refused, as he required the fleet in Pearl to pressure the Japanese into stopping their moves south, and actually RELIEVED Richardson over this discussion. See, inter alia, Richardson’s On the Treadmill to Pearl Harbor.
Again, the British were not tracking anyone in the North Pacific, and they were not passing anything of note on to Marshall and Roosevelt. The final paragraph above is somewhat correct, but doesn’t mean anything: Nagumo was wrong, it was no trap, it was no ambush, and was perfectly possible to catch the Americans completely unprepared.
The question of “did Roosevelt know” is one for Great Debates. Well, actually it’s a factual question to which the answer is “almost certainly not,” but that’s true for “was the earth created in seven literal days,” too, so there we go.