Alternatives to Pearl Harbour?

I think the Japanese outlook was just very parochial (limited and narrow in scope). They realized that they had a strong navy. That the other Powers were very, very far away. That Britain was distracted. They had only a shallow view of Total War, and really didn't understand just what depths of willpower and industrial discipline a modern Western nation was able to summon under wartime necessity. They truly thought a Really Big Blow would see the U.S. deciding that the game wasn't worth the candle.

Yamamoto knew better, but they wouldn't listen to him.

So it might seem irrational, but in fact it was rational, given a particular set of starting assumptions. The problem is that flawed assumptions result in a disastrous outcome.

That view would reuquire either a level of ignorance that is contradicted by their competence in other areas, or a level of delusion that requires a lot of magical thinking not compatible with men who did have a solid scientific education.

Pearl harbour was planned when Barbarossa was going well, and IJN carriers sailed for Pearl at a time when Guderian's Panzers were still driving towards Moscow. In a neat irony, the Russian counter offensive started while the IJN carriers were closing in on Pearl (December 5)
 
No it's not. On a small island people tend to know everything. Laundry gets collected, people have girlfriends and drinking buddies, civilians are invited to parties and girls eventualy make unofficial visits to pilots quarters, etc. Getting stuff like autentication codes is hard. Finding out who sleeps where in a base that has been there for years is easy...
Planes and ships get moved around. Nobody ever changes Bachelor Officer Quarters location for security reasons.

Didn't the Japanese planes very carefully attack a baseball field, thinking it to be some sort of weapons dump or control bunker? Or have I imagined that?
 
That view would reuquire either a level of ignorance that is contradicted by their competence in other areas, or a level of delusion that requires a lot of magical thinking not compatible with men who did have a solid scientific education.

Pearl harbour was planned when Barbarossa was going well, and IJN carriers sailed for Pearl at a time when Guderian's Panzers were still driving towards Moscow. In a neat irony, the Russian counter offensive started while the IJN carriers were closing in on Pearl (December 5)

I could be wrong. But I will note that competence in one area does not automatically mean competence in all others, or even competence at all levels of the same area. There have been good division commanders who couldn't handle an army group command, for instance.
 
That view would reuquire either a level of ignorance that is contradicted by their competence in other areas, or a level of delusion that requires a lot of magical thinking not compatible with men who did have a solid scientific education.

Pearl harbour was planned when Barbarossa was going well, and IJN carriers sailed for Pearl at a time when Guderian's Panzers were still driving towards Moscow. In a neat irony, the Russian counter offensive started while the IJN carriers were closing in on Pearl (December 5)
Japanese internal politics were very odd. Unlike e.g. Germany, you didn't have a relatively unified government making all the decisions, but rather a succession of governments with different priorities, and a wide variety of individual decision-makers (both within the government and the military) who could undermine those priorities. As a result, there was a strong tendency to take the path of least resistance, which turned out to be "sliding into war with the US/UK and hoping it somehow works out."

But yes, there was definitely a level of delusion there (remember that the Japanese had been fighting the Chinese for years and winning on the tactical level, which breeds some degree of overconfidence). Nationalism/racism does weird things to people's thinking (and not just to the Japanese: consider Hitler's expectations for the USSR, or the US/UK's popular pre-war opinion of "the Japs" as adversaries).

But the crucial concern was that the oil embargo would end the ability for the Japanese to continue fighting in China within less than a year. Under the circumstances, the choices were: withdraw from China (the moral alternative, but one that would involve surrendering all the military's gains in China, which was considered politically unacceptable, and personally dangerous to the life expectancy of whoever proposed it) or rolling the dice on an attack on the US and hoping that the Americans lost so badly early on that they would give up. Unfortunately for the Japanese, hope is not a plan.
 
Japanese internal politics were very odd. Unlike e.g. Germany, you didn't have a relatively unified government making all the decisions, but rather a succession of governments with different priorities, and a wide variety of individual decision-makers (both within the government and the military) who could undermine those priorities. As a result, there was a strong tendency to take the path of least resistance, which turned out to be "sliding into war with the US/UK and hoping it somehow works out."

But yes, there was definitely a level of delusion there (remember that the Japanese had been fighting the Chinese for years and winning on the tactical level, which breeds some degree of overconfidence). Nationalism/racism does weird things to people's thinking (and not just to the Japanese: consider Hitler's expectations for the USSR, or the US/UK's popular pre-war opinion of "the Japs" as adversaries).

But the crucial concern was that the oil embargo would end the ability for the Japanese to continue fighting in China within less than a year. Under the circumstances, the choices were: withdraw from China (the moral alternative, but one that would involve surrendering all the military's gains in China, which was considered politically unacceptable, and personally dangerous to the life expectancy of whoever proposed it) or rolling the dice on an attack on the US and hoping that the Americans lost so badly early on that they would give up. Unfortunately for the Japanese, hope is not a plan.

Yet the IJA, that was way more vulnerable to the iniciative of it's younger, more radical elements than the IJN, learned it's lesson from the experiences of 1939, did the math and avoided war with the USSR even when circunstances seemed encouraging.
The expectancy of a German win cannot be ignored as a factor in enabling the Japanese leadership to risk war with the USA.
 
Ai yi...
What is in contention is:
> With the extra prep time, and not being surprised, and in general not being in "It's Sunday and we're at peace" mode, the US defences will inflict a lot more damage than even the second wave suffered.

The USN carrier defences at Midway, Santa Cruz and Eastern Solomons were all beyond what Oahu had available on the afternoon of the 7th, so I don't see the air defences as a significant factor.

The attrition taken in a third strike will materially impact the capabilities of Kido Butai, big time.

Your placing conclusion ahead of observation; KB's mission was to go and fight and smash Oahu if it could. If a third wave resulted in high losses, then withdrawal would be advisable.

And "more than Midway" is being thrown around. Need it be said that Midway didn't work? The strike on the island failed, and the fleet cohesion of KB basically fractured under the strain.

By that logic the USN must always win no matter how many carriers the Japanese had, and no matter how surprised the USN was. If so, that sounds more to me like a Ben Afflick movie than it does a realistic model of real history.
 
Ah. Everything I've read suggested that Kido Butai was operating at the ragged edge of its range. But if you say otherwise, okay.

The confusion is usually the misunderstanding to the purpose of the barrelled oil, a provision which was made against the possibility of bad weather in transit hindering refuelling and did not reflect KB's basic strike range with 8 tankers in train. With the size of the support force, only sustained bad weather could have stretched Nagumo's logistics, and sustained bad weather did not appear until the homeward leg.


Controversy often arises from those who weren't in charge and didn't have to be personally responsible for taking the risk.

Yamaguchi and the captain of the Kaga would be quite surprised they were not responsible for their commands. But neither can be asked now, because both were killed with the loss of their commands, the latter outright, the former by choice on account of the tremendous personal responsibility he felt; that you allege he did not.

Strawman argument. In fact, Submarines were never regarded as an on/off threat -- either you can leave port or you can't. The longer you loitered in one spot, or the more times you used the same transit route, etc, the greater the risk of sub attack. Or any other kind of attack, for that matter. So while sub attack was a risk that just had to be taken, it was one you didn't trifle with foolishly.

Not one single IJN carrier operation over the course of 3 years was deterred by the threat of submarine attack, yet somehow in the best opportunity of the war the IJN should for some reason be deterred by something that never again would deter it.

In terms of 'remaining in the same spot', Nagumo was moving around at 18kt-24kt and was never in the same spot.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
...okay, I'm going to tag out, and instead tag in the thread where I got my idea of how a Pearl third strike would have gone.
https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=91334
Ignore the OP - there's useful posts in there about the actual plausibility of a third strike, though.

Here's CalBear from the first page:

The percentages at Pearl Harbor had already been exceeded, the Kido Butai had suffered very light losses in personnel (although roughly 1 in 4 aircraft available before the battle began had been rendered Hors de Combat (29 actually shot down and around 75 have suffered significant battle damage, most in the second wave). The operational requirements for the mission were fully achieved, surprise was well & truly lost, and there were three American carriers unaccounted for (including Enterprise which was close enough that a flight of her SBD's actually arrived during the attacks, resulting in several being shot down blue-on-blue), it was a good time to cash in and leave the table. While, in hindsight, Yamamoto stated that Nagumo had missed an opportunity, at the time he supported Nagumo's choice. Every good card player knows when to call it a night.

Yamamoto MIGHT have pushed a third strike, but his actions would likely have been the same as Nagumo's. While certainly a planner of some vision, and even more a good listener to his staff, Yamamoto never exercised direct command of the Kido Butai during the war. His actions at Midway, where he initially ordered that the invasion proceed according to the original Plan, even after all four fleet carriers had been sunk; not instructing the amphibious forces to wait for the Combined Fleet to reach direct support positions, or even detaching the heavy escorts that had been shepherding the now lost carriers to support CruDiv 7 in their bombardment tasks shows clearly that he was not incapable of making a poor decision (truthfully, the entire Midway Operation is indicative of this). Moreover, as will be discussed, the decision to retire was NOT as poor as some believe.

The American base, while seriously damaged, was not entirely supine, not even close. While the fighter defenses had been seriously degraded, there were still better than 40 fighters (including 27 P-40) fully operational. The Army AAA batteries, all 31 of them were manned and armed (in the initial waves, only four of these batteries had been able to get into action), while the remaining American vessels in harbor were either fully manned and ready for trouble, or they were about to sortie. In the second wave, the Japanese had lost 20 aircraft and had suffered an additional 60 or so mission kills, this was while the confusion from the initial attack was still at full bellow. The Pearl Harbor defenses would have had several HOURS to have gotten back (or initially) into action, since the Japanese would have had to refuel and rearm the entire strike package before it could be launched. With the edginess of the AAA crews (who shot down a number of AMERICAN aircraft) the fully alerted nature of the surviving fighters (an interesting potential fight would have been the obsolete P-26 vs the equally obsolescent Val & Kate) the third wave would have had a very tough sled.

Had the third wave lost 40 or so aircraft, along with around 80 mission kills (or 120 airframes, just slightly worse than had happened in the second wave), it would have knocked at least one carrier, probably two, out of the war for months, as can been seen in how long it took Zuikaku to reconstitute her wing after Coral Sea. The operational loss of one or two decks could have had some interesting byproducts in the war's opening weeks, starting at Wake, and continuing into the Indian Ocean operations of April 1942.

The Japanese Navy only began to see it as a lost chance when the reversals of May & June of 1942 occurred, until then Pearl Harbor had been seen as an unqualified success (save the poor luck of missing the carriers). Moreover, in the long run, even the total devastation of Pearl Harbor would have altered the end of the Pacific War not a whit.
 
I just would like to ask:
What was the comparitive air strength remaining in Hawaii vs that in midway?

At the Battle of Midway the USN had about 26+27+27+7 F4F's and 20 F2's, for a total of 87 x first rate and 20 x 2nd rate fighters. Oahu might have been about 70 fighters, but a high portion of those were obsolete P-26 and P-36 types.

Examples showing more KB airstrength than at midway seem to be a bit lopsided, as there were also much stronger US airforces remaining in and around PH,

USN air defences at Midway were stronger than at Oahu on the afternoon of the 7th, both in terms of fighter quality, but as importantly, in terms of intercept coordination and base operations tempo - an undamaged carrier being a far better fighter base than a heavily damaged air base.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
USN air defences at Midway were stronger than at Oahu on the afternoon of the 7th, both in terms of fighter quality, but as importantly, in terms of intercept coordination and base operations tempo - an undamaged carrier being a far better fighter base than a heavily damaged air base.

Oh, now I see. You're not counting the AAA. Right, that probably explains the disparity.
 
I disagree, they lost outright just nine aircraft in the first wave, but 20 in the second, and so a third wave would suffer even higher losses, especially as there's be fewer aircraft to participate, not to mention more American aircraft ready (55 aircraft escaped unscathed, at least some of them would have been fighters).

I'm not following the logic that 55 fighters should deter Kido Butai when US combat aircraft production in 1944 was 96,000 aircraft.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
I'm not following the logic that 55 fighters should deter Kido Butai when US combat aircraft production in 1944 was 96,000 aircraft.

...oh, good lord. Is this going to get into the "given perfect knowledge of the future, all other paths would lead to loss therefore this path which has a slight chance of success is logically ideal" stuff from the Sealion thread?
 
But yes, there was definitely a level of delusion there (remember that the Japanese had been fighting the Chinese for years and winning on the tactical level, which breeds some degree of overconfidence).

But the dillusion in Japan was not Yamamoto's. He knew what he was up against, and he thought that Japan's only chance was to defeat the USN and secure terms. That's why Nagumo withdrawing at Hawaii was a blow - because Nagumo clearly had no clue that in the longer term, the carrier or two he thought he may preserve, didn't matter on the strategic scale. That Yamamoto's hope for a negotiated peace was unfounded does not make Nagumo's timidity any the less uncalled for.
 
...oh, good lord. Is this going to get into the "given perfect knowledge of the future, all other paths would lead to loss therefore this path which has a slight chance of success is logically ideal" stuff from the Sealion thread?

Yes!
(although more accurate to say "given perfect knowledge of the future, all other paths would lead to loss therefore this path which has a slight chance of success must have been glaringly obviously correct at the time")

Which is why I'm tapping out.

You can't explain to people who won't comprehend. (Edit: people have undoubtedly made this statement about me before!)
 

Saphroneth

Banned
Yes!
(although more accurate to say "given perfect knowledge of the future, all other paths would lead to loss therefore this path which has a slight chance of success must have been glaringly obviously correct at the time")

Which is why I'm tapping out.

You can't explain to people who won't comprehend. (Edit: people have undoubtedly made this statement about me before!)

Well, it's all other paths leading to loss in the first place which is where I have the problem. They tend not to, unless the questioner takes the point JUST AFTER the great military victory to start asking these questions.
So, for example, the best path for Japan in 1941 is to... pull out of China. This prevents economic ruin. (The earlier they do this, the better, of course.) Similarly, the best path for Germany in the late 1930s is one which doesn't lead to war in the first place (such as honouring Munich - there, Germany's fulfilled Grossdeuschland without a shot being fired), and the best path for Italy in 1940 is to remain neutral.
 
...oh, good lord. Is this going to get into the "given perfect knowledge of the future, all other paths would lead to loss therefore this path which has a slight chance of success is logically ideal" stuff from the Sealion thread?

Yamamoto was painfully aware of the crushing industrial superiority of the United States, and would no doubt have immediately dismissed the notion that 55 fighters should deter KB, when the US government was openly talking about production of 50,000 aircraft per year.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
Yamamoto was painfully aware of the crushing industrial superiority of the United States, and would no doubt have immediately dismissed the notion that 55 fighters should deter KB, when the US government was openly talking about production of 50,000 aircraft per year.
It's not the fighters alone.
It's the AAA, the fact that this time they'd have RADAR warning (the lookout point), the fact they'd be closed up for action and ready to rock, the fact that by then his pilots would have been up since before 6 AM (and had flown hundreds of miles), hence degrading their performance, the fact that they'd taken heavy casualties from the AAA alone, the fact that they were running low on fuel, and the fact that the original ops plan NEVER MENTIONED A THIRD STRIKE.
 
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