Yes, after Midway there were newspaper reports about how Army bombers had been the primary weapon that attacked the Japanese carriers. This, of course, annoyed the hell out of King. Especially when a decision was made not to challenge the stories in order to spread disinformation to Japan.
There had been Army bombers which participated in the battle and made attacks against the Japanese fleet. But apparently these attacks were completely ineffective and not a single bomb hit a ship. All of the actual damage had been done by Navy and Marine planes.
The Doolittle raid had an outsized result in that it helped solidify the Japanese military support for the Midway operation, including having the Imperial Army reverse its opposition and persuaded it to contribute the necessary troops.
This is a major element discussed in Shattered Sword, and Parshall points out how the IJN did not understand force preservation, often preferring reckless actions instead of saving the assets to fight again. They were not careful with Hiryu, the final carrier and could have instead saved it to fight another day.
I haven’t read Shattered Sword but Toll made the same point in his books (which I referenced above). It’s bizarre to see how willing Japan was to just throw away their own troops in missions they knew were hopeless. Especially when the Japanese were aware that they were facing an enemy with greater resources and they couldn’t win a war of attrition.
Even if this were accurate, the Japanese could not have won the war even with the actual capacity. From Grim Economic Realities
It goes on to discuss how this capacity directly affected carrier production and concludes:
One of the common myths about WWII was that the Japanese blundered by not attacking the oil storage and ground facilities at Pearl Harbor. Without getting into the technical discussion of why what wasn’t possible, one of the Japanese officers later stated that they never considered attacking the oil, et al because if they had taken into logistics and war capacities, they would never have started the war in the first place.
One of the problems with alternative histories of the Pacific War is that they neglect the helplessness of Japan’s position.
I second the recommendation for Pacific Crucible but I want to point out that for and better understanding of the Battle of Midway, then Shattered Sword is a must read. Toll repeats the generally accepted wisdom that the Midway operation was simply to draw out the US fleet (quoting Toll, “When he did so [backing the Midway operation], his real objective was not the island itself, which was of dubious value, but the hope of flushing the Pacific Fleet out of Pearl Harbor and destroying it in a pitched battle.”
Parshall goes into much greater depth and demonstrates the dual nature of the mission with the full purpose of invading and occupying the islands. As Toll’s book covers a much greater scope while Parshall is entirely focused on Midway and the steps up to it.
Shattered Sword covers some of the chaotic nature of the organization of the Japanese imperial military although Eri Hotta’s Japan 1941: Countdown to Infamy give a much better breakdown of the insanity of the situation. I’ll try to give a brief summary later.
"One of the common myths about WWII was that the Japanese blundered by not attacking the oil storage and ground facilities at Pearl Harbor. Without getting into the technical discussion of why what wasn’t possible,…." you’re not thinking about the debunked theory that those oil tanks were the stronger, nigh bulletproof ones used much later are you? They could have bombed or strafed them, but it would only have delayed things a little, and true, it wasnt part of the Japanese strategy.
After the Eastern Solomons and Santa Cruz battles in August and October, the USN was down to one mangled carrier (Enterprise). That was facing three fleet carriers and two light carriers; if the Hiryu had been available as well, it’s hard to see how even the “Big E” would have survived.
Can you define “delayed things a little”? How long is “a little”?
What about bombing the dry docks used for repair (which I think they skipped too)?
My understanding is the Japanese hoped their attack would keep the US out of the war long enough that they could capture what they needed and it would all be a fait accompli. They knew they would not win a war of attrition. They hoped they’d make it so expensive for the US to recover and win that the US would seek a negotiated peace that would leave Japan in control of the South Pacific.
Just to piggyback on TokyoBayer’s posts, in Shattered Sword the authors wrote:
Karl von Clausewitz’s famous maxim that “No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy” probably never had a less enthusiastic audience than the Imperial Japanese Navy.
ISTM overall that when the US did the oil embargo the Japanese faced a Hobson’s choice.
They had been on an expansionist imperialist roll. Now suddenly somebody a lot bigger was kneeling on their neck. At that moment they realized they were at the apex of their powers. They could either push the bully off their neck now, or try to do it later once they’d been half-asphyxiated.
So now it had to be. And given the tenor of their high command, they convinced themselves the US would crumble when their bluff was called with the first hard punch at Pearl. Which was wrong, but not crazy wrong.
Had the Japanese instead focused on embargo running from the DEI & such, they may well have had a very different future.
My real point being the US embargo has a decent claim to being the true casus belli here. Like modern economic sanctions, but far more effective, we’d backed them deep into an unsurvivable corner. At which point it was just a question of where and when they’d come out swinging desperately.
Backing up further, to be sure the US would not have embargoed a peaceful non-imperialist non-atrocity-committing nation. The embargo was a tactical response to Japan’s pre-existing years-long strategic beastliness.
These are not easy things to destroy. A dry dock is essentially a concrete pit, surrounded by utility buildings. The pit is the important part, and concrete is famously durable. You could destroy it with aerial bombardment, but not easily, and Nagumo was justifiably concerned that the American defenders were significantly more effective against the second wave than they had been against the first (and he didn’t know where the carriers were.)
Tank farms are more destructible than a dry dock, but they’re very big and spread out. Allied strategic bombers struggled to effectively destroy oil facilities in World War II throwing even larger raids of much larger bombers at them.
Bully? The reason the USA stopped selling American oil to Japan was due to their imperialistic invasion of mainland China, including stuff like the Rape of Nanking.
The Japanese could have simply consolidated their puppet state in Manchukuo, and perhaps invaded the DEI to get their oil. In fact, the Japanese army was floundering badly in China. They didnt need to continue invading China.
Actually, those events predate the embargos (scrap metal and oil) by several years. The immediate cause was Japan’s incursion into French colonies in Indochina.
I meant bully from Japan’s POV. IOW their reaction was “The big mean ol’ USofA is picking on poor innocent small us = Japan.”
As I said clearly at the end, the whole unpleasantness was started by Japan’s nasty imperialism. Of which the Nanjing/Nanking event was one of many.
What I was suggesting was that the embargo was the thing which ensured Japan & the US would come to blows; up to that point it was plausible we’d just trade nasty cables and support proxies and colonies & such for the next 5-10 years. Once we embargoed, then the train to direct war had left the station; it was then just a matter of when & where the first stop would be along that line.
In no sense did I mean to suggest that the US action was excessive or unjustified. But it clearly was highly escalatory. And most importantly, by choking the Japanese homeland economy, it meant that Japan’s high command was placed under great pressure to respond very quickly.
Ok, good. Some people here have posted that the USA forced the Japanese to Attack by the embargoes.
Actually, the Oil embargo didnt have to effect the Japanese homeland economy, what it was really doing was slowing the Japanese war effort vs China. The Homeland could have had all the oil it needed for domastic uses.
Hence their very urgent need to get the USA off their neck using that Navy before said Navy was rendered inert.
One of the recurring themes in this thread as to both Midway and Pearl was the Japanese reluctance / resistance to taking their US opponent seriously. They assumed we’d be Cylon clones who’d play our role as scripted in the IJN war plans.
My contention is much of that was because they had to assume that. Both for lack of time and manpower to examine other less favorable rabbit trails and because the only way their plans led to sweet Victory in the short time they’d still have fuel would be if the USN obligingly played dummy w feet of clay to their super ninjas.
And so they persuaded themselves that’s how it will work out and were more or less dumbfounded when it did not. They were then on the back foot strategically for the remaining duration. It took another year+ for them to pushed onto the back foot tactically, and even then on any given day in any given arena either side could have the local tactical initiative.
Without reviewing the book, I don’t remember all of the details, but Eri Hotta’s Japan 1941: Countdown to Infamy is a great read, and along with other sources it shows how the Japanese military organization up through WWII hindered the efforts to have effective overall strategies and coherence. This is directly related to the questions raised in this thread about the purposes of the operation as well as their implementations.
The late 19th century Meiji Constitution placed the General Staffs of the Army and Nay outside of civilian control. They directly reported to the Emperor who was duty bound to accept the advice of his advisors. The Army (War) Minister and Navy Minister who were members of the cabinet also reported to the Emperor and both the general staffs and ministries were independent of each other.
The decision making process was insane. From Japan 1941
Having lived in Japan for more than 20 years, worked in Japanese organizations and seen countless others, then I was very familiar with this sort of craziness.
The Japanese government problems more or less came about by a quirk of the foundation of the modern Japanese nation-state. (I will spare you the fascinating but long and complicated story.) The important part is that the individuals who ran things governed, if not exactly in perfect harmony, by mutual agreement and a considerable level of trust. Basically, they could manage things this way, because they had very similar ideas.
Through some odd historical paths Japan more or less became a pretty successful democracy in the early 20th century, but the government structure that Tokyobayer described and a program of nationalization that worked a little too well (as in, they created programs to emphasize Japanese identity over regional or local ones via military service and more-or-less clubs for former soldiers which was everyody) allowed the military to effectively gain control of the state. Except, most of it was basically being run by JO’s. And because the more radical JO’s were the ones starting conflict and carrying out actions, they government ended up being in part directed by whatever the most ambitious or possible mad Lieutenants in the entire Imperial Army wanted. Japan invaded Manchuria basically because officers who emphatically did not on paper have the authority to do any any such thing made it happen, and no one above them knew how to stop it.
I have nothing substantive to add to this conversation, but just wanted to say it’s been a fascinating thread to read. Threads like this one are the reason I began reading the SDMB and eventually joined.