WI: Japan Further destroys Pearl Harbor

wcv215

wcv215

They take heavy casualties in their next waves against the now prepared defenses, and even more casualties as their planes are forced to land on their carriers at night, depleting the air wings that would be so vital in the later battles in the Pacific for little additional damage. Destroying the dry docks is difficult, destroying the fuel tanks is even more difficult.
 

Glenn239

ThatOneGuy said:
What if Japan blew up up Pearl Harbor after four waves and destroying the Fuel depot on the island?
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A second set of waves would have to be planned ahead of time in order to be back by dark, they would be weaker due to losses and damaged aircraft, so could damage the base to an extent, but probably not too significantly. (It would require repeated raids to generate significant damage, more than could be accomplished on the 7th).
 

Zheng He

Not to be snarky but I think there might be more threads started on this topic than there are on the Sea Mammal...
 

riggerrob

Destroying drydocks is difficult. Demolition requires hundreds of tons of high explosives, carefully placed in direct contact with the dry dock. Consider the British raid on the drydock in St. Nazaire. They stuffed HMS Campbellton with high explosives and rammed her into the gates of the dry dock. Meanwhile, hundreds of Commandos ran around looting and pillaging the port facilities. A few hours later, the Campbellton exploded, ruining the dry dock for the rest of the war.

At Pearl Harbour, how far were the dry docks from the mouth of the hrabour?
How many dry docks in Pearl Harbour?
 

PMN1

Alex1guy said:
How does one "blow up" a harbour?
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HMS Pinafore on Warships1 managed it managed it, he has the Neosho in harbour and torpedoed by a mini-sub with the Neosho going bang in a very violent way....Trial by Ordeal was the name of the story.
 

Cryhavoc101

A 3rd attack on POL and Dock facilities etc was possible but it would have been significantly more costly than the other 2 attacks put together and would have required a night landing by the pilots.

There was also the fact that the fleet was operating at its utmost extreme range from a friendly port

I however do believe that it should have been attempted

It would have made very little difference to the war but if your going "All in" then go all in.
 

Zheng He

Cryhavoc101 said:
A 3rd attack on POL and Dock facilities etc was possible but it would have been significantly more costly than the other 2 attacks put together and would have required a night landing by the pilots.

There was also the fact that the fleet was operating at its utmost extreme range from a friendly port

I however do believe that it should have been attempted

It would have made very little difference to the war but if your going "All in" then go all in.
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The problem is that the damage that likely would have been done to those facilities has been overstated. These are hard targets that can be repaired and the US had repair capability at Pearl Harbor and could easily bring gear and crews in from the West Coast.

I am also not convinced that this option was ever seriously considered for a variety of reasons. Fuchida's post war claims not withstanding.
 

OpanaPointer

The IJN didn't have the capability to do any serious damage to the infrastructure at Pearl Harbor. Attack on Pearl Harbor: Strategy, Combat, Myths, Deceptions, by Alan D. Zimm, goes into detail on this.

BTW, Neosho, had finished off-loading her load of avgas at about 0700 that morning. Blowing her up wouldn't have accomplished much.

Regarding torpedoing the drydock gates, we could have constructed temporary ones quickly and new ones could have arrived from the States in two months.

It's often suggested that the IJN should have destroyed the fuel supply. They didn't have enough planes to destroy all 54 tank. And the planes that could attack them, the dive bombers, had a ~15% hit rate, meaning only 8 tanks would have been hit. The tanks had berms around them to contain the oil in the case of a catastrophic structural failure, so simply destroying the tanks wouldn't have made the fuel go away.

But the real problem with destroying the infrastructure is that the IJN pilots would have done what they did in the first two waves, that being attacking whatever they could find. Fire discipline was miserable. And every single torpedo pilot reported they had dropped on a battleship. Which simply isn't true.
 

MattII

riggerrob said:
Destroying drydocks is difficult. Demolition requires hundreds of tons of high explosives, carefully placed in direct contact with the dry dock. Consider the British raid on the drydock in St. Nazaire. They stuffed HMS Campbellton with high explosives and rammed her into the gates of the dry dock. Meanwhile, hundreds of Commandos ran around looting and pillaging the port facilities. A few hours later, the Campbellton exploded, ruining the dry dock for the rest of the war.
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This. Oh a torpedo on the gates might require a year or so to repair, but its in no way unrepairable.

Cryhavoc101 said:
I however do believe that it should have been attempted
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It would have done very limited damage at a great cost in pilots and aircraft, with the former being quite hard for the Japanese to replace.

It would have made very little difference to the war but if your going "All in" then go all in.
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Japan wasn't going all-in, they were hoping for a KO.

Lateknight said:
Well that's a given, they always lose. Though maybe if they did better at pearl harbor they might add a few more weeks to the war.
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Maybe a few weeks cumulative, but I don't think much more.
 
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