Although I have no idea if the Japanese had any idea that the Americans could so successfully raise and repair badly-damaged ships.
Ummm…how about the book you’re quoting? I just finished reading this (great book, btw) and they make repeated references to all US Pacific forces making plans and holding training exercises oriented around “Orange” - the code for the Japanese. We didn’t want a war with Japan, but it was seen as inevitable. The entire US diplomatic strategy in 1940-1941 was centered around delaying it as long as possible to allow us to focus on the European war and continue to build up the Pacific Fleet, but we knew that, sooner or (hopefully) later, we were going to have to slug it out.
“Ironically, the USA caused the japanese to turn awy from Siberia, when President Roosevelt embargoed shipments of California-produced oil to japan.”
How much oil was California producing? Does it still produce or contain oil?
Thanks, Silenus, my point exactly. Any attempt by the US to carry the War to the Western Pacific in 1941 or 1942 would have been premature and resulted in our forces being badly mauled. Pearl Harbor forced the US to break its addiction to the battleship and rely on its greatest resource: time (time to build more carriers and improve our aircraft). And damn straight the galvanization was a major factor. The War would have been highly controversial and under-funded otherwise.
Rickjay:
Can’t you see how much greater a disaster this would have been? Troop transports would have been sunk as well, you know. And there have been no Midway in this scenario.
With or without Pearl Harbor, we needed to wait. PH forced us to wait; otherwise we could not have resisted the temptation to try to reinforce the Philippines or intervene in SE Asia throught the teeth of Japanese land-based air, submarines, and their powerful surface fleet.
Ummm…
But the U.S. Navy DID carry the war into the Western Pacific in 1942. You do know where the Coral Sea is, right? Guadalcanal? The U.S., as I pointed out, was amazingly aggressive and took the war to Japan as soon as it could be arranged.
Geez, it’s as if the entire year 1942 didn’t happen. And what “addiction to the battleship?”
I do realize admirals had a great fondness for battleships, but there’s a degree of oversimplification going on here. The U.S. Navy knew full well how important aircraft carriers were, which is why they built and deployed them in the first place. They wouldn’t have just thrown them away because they still had battleships.
Of course there would have been. Absent the Pearl Harbor attack the Japanese would still have had exactly the same problem in mid-1942 that they had anyway; an aggressive and dangerous U.S. Pacific Fleet that had thwarted their plans in the Coral Sea and bombed the Japanese mainland. Your statement that the U.S. chose to wait is in fact exactly the opposite of what the U.S. did; the U.S. was astonishingly aggressive, given its weakend position, which forced the Japanese into re-attacking in the Central Pacific, hence resulting in Midway. Midway was the logical Japanese plan whether or not Arizona was afloat.
The importance of the Battle of the Coral Sea is either being totally forgotten or unaccountably underestimated here, for what reason I can’t imagine. It was because the United States ATTACKED, attempted to project force into the southwestern Pacific, (granted, to prevent an invasion of Australia) that the war progressed inexorably towards Midway. The Japanese felt they had no choice but to trap and destroy the Pacific Fleet in June 1942.
I think it’s nuts to think that having a few more battleships would have caused McArthur or Nimitz to do something insane like try to invade the re-Philippines in 1942. The strategic situation really would not have been all that different if the U.S. was up a couple of battleships, and their tactics would not have changed much. Surface warfare forces were a factor throughout the war; they didn’t supplant carrier forces, they were an extra weapon.
No. The U.S. was planning in case Japan attacked us. As you pointed out also had plans for a war with Britian and several other nations. But there is a HUGE difference from the US thinking that Japan may attack us, and making plans on that contingency- as opposed to a plan for us to initiate a war with Japan. At no time did we have any plans to start a war with Japan. But your post above seems - at least to me- to indicate that we were also planning to start a war, and it just happened that Japan hit us first. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The mistake Japan made was attacking us at all- they miscalculated how Isolationist the American public was. Japam basicly took Indochina without a shot and they could also have taken the Dutch colonies and all the USA would have done is complain louder. My High School Played a huge wargame against iother HS where we were the Japanese. As Trade Minister that was my suggestion- take French Indochina and the Dutch colonies. Maybe the British colonies also. That oil and other raw material could then have been used to make Japan so powerful it could defy the USA.
I don’t know how much oil California produced historically, but there are still plenty of oil wells in the heart of LA. If you drive through the hills east of Culver City you’ll see numerous working pumps, and there’s a large derrick right next to Beverly Hills High School. (Although its hidden by a pretty facade covered with painted daisies … .)
Yep. They sold it for $46,000 to be cut up for scrap. Too bad it sank in a storm while being towed back to the mainland.
There are also many rigs off the Santa Barbara coast. They are not being used now, for environmental reasons.
The statement was made by Tom and Rickjay that we were planning to attack first. As you said, we did not want a war with Japan. DrDeth has already pointed this out, but since my position was attacked, I thought I would point it out also.
I have made no claim that the U.S. intended to atrtack Japan or to initiate a war with Japan. I have no idea what alternate universe thread you are reading that causes you to repeat that claim.
I said that U.S. was planning on having a war with Japan. As early as 1905, it became clear to the U.S. military that we would have a war with Japan–their planning and predictions were correct. Unlike War Plans Red, Green, and others, which were, indeed, contingency plans, War Plan Orange was the most detailed and throroughly considered plan and was constantly revised on the grounds that the war was inevitable. Nothing that I have said indicates a desire to start a war, only that we planned on meeting the inevitable.
People in Florida and the Carolinas plan on having hurricanes; people in California and Japan plan on having earthquakes; people in Minnesota and the Michigan U.P. plan on having heavy snowfalls each winter. Occasionally the events do not occur, the the people (or, at least the smart ones), plan on having those events, anyway.
Actually, the proponents of the Northern Plan had already lost their battle for influence in 1939, long before the U.S. embargoes were instituted. At the battle of Khalkhin-Gol, the Soviets had seriously torn up the Japanese and caused the proponents of the Northern Plan to lose face after they had boasted that the Soviets would be helpless before the might of the Imperial Army.
Your actual words “the U.S. was also planning to have a war with Japan.” with the 'also" *and the context * made both me and barbitu8 think that you indicated that the USA was *also * planning on attacking Japan. Not 'alternate universe" at all. Ok, I guess that’s not what you meant, but it’s the connotation that we read.
Rickjay:
Nowhere near the Philippines, Malaysia, and the Dutch East Indes, that’s where. If the Japanese had attacked these areas without attacking PH, the US would have had to send major forces there in order to halt their advance. The area was ringed with Japanese (c’mon, can’t I say “Jap”?) air bases and they would have known we were coming. Coral Sea, Midway, and Guadalcanal were all over-extensions by the Japanese that we were able to nip. Breaking their naval codes was more useful in that quasi-defensive mode in 1942 than it would have been in a prematurely offensive one.
That in order to thwart the Japs’ creation of the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere the US would had to have intervened in East Asia is not so much my point as the assumption upon which my point is based. If you’re saying that we would have waited till 1944 to send forces to the Philippines regardless then we see eye-to-eye on that score. But that still leaves the political influence of PH, which was undeniably a major factor in the US prosecution of the War.