That wasn’t really the plan. The plan was that Japan would cripple the American Navy with a sneak attack (that worked) and then occupy a bunch of territory while we were unable to stop them (this also worked). The Japanese figured they could then set up a strong defensive perimeter than the United States would be unable to penetrate even after we recovered. We might punch away at the edge for a while but we would eventually realize it was futile and then we would sit down to negotiate with Japan on favorable terms.
As I said, it looked like it was working at the beginning. But Japan grew overconfident and extended the outer edge of its defensive perimeter beyond the original plans (which made it harder to hold). They also overestimated their ability to hold their perimeter - they could not maintain the qualitative superiority they were counting on and they had a poor grasp of the logistics of supporting a military presence in such a large area. But the biggie was completely misunderstanding how much America would be able to build up its military once it chose to do so. The United States was able to build up a much larger military than the Japanese ever thought they’d have to fight.
Thanks for the clarification. Even so, it doesn’t strike as very sound, but we have the benefit of hindsight. I suppose the Japanese may not have figured the Americans would come up with the idea of island hopping. William Manchester in his Douglas MacArthur biography, points out the Japanese had more troops at Rabual than Bonaparte had at Waterloo. But it was bypassed, leaving the troops to wither while planes and submarines
attacked Japanese shipping.
Although Yamamoto was probably the best military leader familiar with the US potential for industrial output, he was counting on the US giving in much earlier, prior to the further expansion of their outer perimeter. One of the reasons given for the attack on Midway was that they had expected the US to give up earlier and the US hadn’t.
Japan had beaten China and Russia in the same sort of limited warfare, and had emerged with more territory. They expected something similar from the US.
Japan simply wasn’t counting on a long term war, nor a total war. She didn’t have the logistics to handle one, nor the industrial output. As an example, Japan lost 50% of its shipping capacity when it declared war, because it was dependent on foreign ships. It recovered about 25% back through capturing fleets from countries it overran, but it was still in the hole. Another example is that the solders on the Pacific islands weren’t given enough rations.
It wasn’t completely crazy for the Japanese to think that the USA would come to some kind of agreement eventually. The Pacific is vast, Japan neutralized one of our strongest assets at PH and they had probably 6 months to a year to prepare a defensive perimeter that they had every reason to believe could be made solid enough to withstand most assaults. AND everybody else was engaged in a life or death struggle with Germany and it wasn’t at all clear that Germany was going to lose.
Japan under estimated the resolve of the allies and and they really, really underestimated the production capability of the USA. By 1944, the US could produce the equivalent of the entire Japanese fleet, every year. Who could have predicted that?
Thanks to TOKYOBAYER for the info on “Two-Ocean Navy Act.” As posted earlier:
“There already was a recognition of air power prior to the start of the war. The Two Ocean Act of 1940 called for more carriers than battleships.”
Reading up, and authorizing 18 to be built, there was certainly a recognition in 1940 that more CVs were a priority. There were also 2 Iowa Class and 5 Montana Class BBs authorized. Does it not seem logical, however, that the cancellation of the Montana Class ships, and the building of the Midway, indicate that sometime post-1940 the priorities (CV vs. BB) were further accentuated?
Imperial Japan hadn’t planned for the Pearl Harbor attack to be a “sneak” attack. An attack with very little warning but not an undeclared attack. Oops. Did the “sneak” attack greatly effect the attitude of the millions of Americans who enlisted or flooded into factories to build ships, planes, rifles, and tanks. I believe it did. In 1940, there were less than 400,000 soldiers, sailors, and marines in the U.S. military. By 1945, there were over 12 million. Don’t want Hiroshima? Don’t start Pearl Harbor.
It’s sometimes overlooked but Imperial Japan also intended to cripple the British Royal Navy in the area and also prevent the British from blocking Imperial Japan’s intended conquests in Asia. British Force Z was attacked north of Singapore, on Dec 10, 1941, and HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse were sunk.
It absolutely **was ** planned and intended to be a sneak attack; that is an attack delivered without warning and without declaration of war. A mythology developed surrounding the 14 point message that was to be delivered by Japan to Secretary of State Hull but due to delay in decrypting wasn’t delivered until after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The full text of the message can be read here; it is neither a declaration of war nor does it contain any hint of even the threat of the use of force by Japan. It does not even break diplomatic ties between the two countries. Japan had done much the same thing 37 years prior in the Russo-Japanese War:
Most of all, Japan underestimated the fighting spirit of our navy. In '42, the IJN thought that our carriers wouldn’t even come out to play if USN thought that it would be a tough fight. So in the run up to Midway, the IJN tried to deceive us by only showing “small” forces. They never realized just how much the USN, from admirals to common sailors, were raring for a fight.
No, Yamamoto did not. He was hoping to eventually to inflict enough causalities on the US to make the US tire and negotiate a peace, but he certainly did not expect the US to quit the war within 6 months!
(Quote from Yamamoto in Wikipedia, taken from Gordon Prange At Dawn We Slept): Should hostilities once break out between Japan and the United States, it would not be enough that we take Guam and the Philippines, nor even Hawaii and San Francisco. To make victory certain, we would have to march into Washington and dictate the terms of peace in the White House. I wonder if our politicians (who speak so lightly of a Japanese-American war) have confidence as to the final outcome and are prepared to make the necessary sacrifices.
There is no way that quote can be spun as predicting the US would be out of the war in 6 months.
It is worth mentioning Japan had a real time example of US tenacity staring it in the face in the Philippines, where Bataan held out against impossible odds until 4/9/42, and Corregidor held out against impossible odds until 5/6/42. It is also worth mentioning that the 4/18/42 Doolittle Raid probably outweighed all other factors combined in Japan’s decision to go on the offensive westward.
This inference fails because although Japan had beaten China and Russia in 1894-95 and 1904-05 respectively it had been at war with China since 1937-- over 4 years-- with no end in sight as of 1941.
Japan was counting on hanging on for dear life, long-term and total. There may have been some fools who felt otherwise at the time, and there may be some media and academic revisionists who now place undue weight on the significance of those fools.
Minor question about your excellent post. You mention the “specially designed bombs” used by the IJN and that they would be ineffective were the ships at sea. Why would they be ineffective? AIUI, they were converted 14 inch and greater BB AP shells, on the theory that, since they were designed to be effective in plunging fire, why not have a dive-bomber drop them instead? If that’s right—and it seemed to be for the USS Arizona—whyy couldn’t the Japanese also use those bombs while the ships were underway? (Getting successfully through the BB’s AAA screen to the release point, especially after successive AAA upgrades, and the introduction of the proximity fuze, is left as an exercise for the reader…)
It’s a different problem. Ships at sea are hard to hit because they’re moving targets. The ships at Pearl Harbor were stationary but they were hard to hit because they were in shallow water. The special torpedoes worked in shallow water but gave no advantage against a moving ship.
Agree on the torps. But the comment that perplexed me was about bombs. I couldn’t see why they wouldn’t be extremely effective as well.
Aside, I view a bit of the historiography surrounding America’s resolve in early 1942 to be results oriented. We’ve discussed it before here, but I don’t think it’s as open and shut as many have said that the US would continue strongly after a hypothetical pasting at Midway, especially if the IJN descended on Pearl with their SAG for some recreational shelling, a la the USN shelling Japan in July 1945.
The Command Summary of FADM Nimitz was compiled by the War Plans Section of the Pacific Command Headquarters in Hawaii during World War II. It contains daily estimates of the situation, command decisions, and running summaries of communications from December 7, 1941 to August 31, 1945. Naval War College Historian Douglas Smith avers that it is “the most authoritative source on the Pacific War available anywhere”.
Recreational shelling of Pearl would almost certainly have been a very bad idea. The US battleships shelling Japan’s coast in July 1945 weren’t being shot back at, and for all of its demonstrated vulnerability to surprise air attack one thing Oahu was well prepared to deal with was attack by sea. The island was bristling with coastal defense batteries. There’s a map with locations of batteries here, on Dec 7, 1941 the Coastal Artillery Command Harbor Defense regiments at Honolulu and Pearl Harbor had between them:
That’s not including the AAA in the Coastal Artillery (AA) regiments on the island, nor the field artillery of the two Army divisions on the island. The coastal artillery was further reinforced after the war began; something interesting I came across looking these up just now is that the 8 twin 8"/55 mounts from the Lexington and Saratoga that were removed to be replaced with 5"/38 DP mounts were installed on Oahu as coastal artillery from January to April 1942. Lengthy pdf article from The Coast Defense Journal on it here.
Thanks for the .pdf Dissonance. IIRC, most of the AAA and secondary mounts removed from USN ships during upgrades, like the ones you mention, and the old 1.1 inch guns, among others, ended up getting recycled for use Stateside. Or, in the case of USS Texas’s 5 in./51s, on Wake Island, where they proved quite effective for a little while.
All that said, and you’d know this better than me, but have coastal defense artillery ever been proven effective vs a naval raiding party? Effective meaning they repulsed the invasion. I mean, I guess if the ships are deterred from attacking in the first place, that’s the best sort of victory. I only remember reading about one effective ship v. coastal artillery engagement where the ships came out definitely second best, and that was the Kriegsmarine vs Norwegian artillery during the Invasion of Norwayin 1940.
I had forgotten until I re-looked it up, but I guess the IJN’s first experience trying to take Wake Island counts too. That might have made them a bit gunshy about trying to neutralize coastal artillery with ship-borne guns, as opposed to capturing them with ground troops (Singapore) or air attacks+amphibious landing (Corregidor). The wiki doesn’t list it, but were there significant Japanese naval losses incurred during the Corregidor landings?
In modern times, if we stretch the definition of “coastal artillery,” they’ve proven quite effectiveat times, especially if the ships don’t have AEW. One fear of mine during the latest Syrian unpleasantness was that Assad would use some of the ex-Russian SSMs, maybe off of a merchant vessel, to make life rough for any USN carrier group that wanted to interfere.
For those with an interest in WW2 Coastal Artillery performance,this discussion at a naval weapons public discussion board looks quite interesting. I’m at least learning a lot by reading it. In particular, I would have naively thought the firecontrol problem was much more difficult for the land-based artillery—their location is well-known, and they aren’t moving, unlike the ships’—but from reading that, it looks like it was a much easier problem for the land-based guys to solve. Longer base range-finders, multiple redundancy in directors, and a longer base between range-finders make determining the ships’ azimuth and range from the guns nowhere near as difficult as the problem from the ships’ end. And of course, an island doesn’t roll or pitch.
So they had the fire powert of one obsolescent battleship, one battle cruiser, and a couple of heavy cruisers. That does not strike me as much of a deterrent, much less a serious method of opposing a landing.