DBWI: American disaster at Pearl Harbor

On Dec 7th, 1941 Japan attacked Pearl Harbor sinking 2 battleships, 2 cruisers and a destroyer while losing 3 aircraft carriers and 3 destroyers. Could we make this an absolute American disaster like the US losing say 4 battleships while Japan loses none of its carriers or is this ASB? OOC: Japan figured on losing 2 so I made it slightly worse than they expected.
 
Well you could delay the two Ocean Navy Act or simply get the navy to drag its feet, maybe have the Big E and Lady Lex somewhere else, say delivering planes, and not just off shore on exercises
 
Could it take us longer to upgrade most of our fighters to Wildcats and Thunderbolts? There was a considerable number of complaints of the cost in upgrading them from Buffaloes and Hawks but FDR insisted on the upgrade. Can you imagine if the Buffalo and the Hawk were there instead of Wildcats and Thunderbolts? :eek: What about catching the planes on the ground instead of in the air?
 
It is a scary thought. Hawaii would have been left defenseless and the bloody ground war to retake the islands would have been a huge delay in the drive against Japan.
 
It wasn't an invasion fleet so there was no way for them to actually take the island as they didn't have any transports full of soldiers to take it. If they were slowed down by having to take along transports they really would have been decimated! However, we might have lost Wake if the Japanese still had those three carriers.
 
Probably the best way to avoid this would be to prevent the American codebreakers from intercepting the message telling Nagumo to leave to attack Pearl. Then their carriers wouldn't have been ready, and more battleships could be sunk.
 
Probably the best way to avoid this would be to prevent the American codebreakers from intercepting the message telling Nagumo to leave to attack Pearl. Then their carriers wouldn't have been ready, and more battleships could be sunk.

True, and the Thunderbolts wouldn't have been ready to take off the moment the carriers were spotted.
 
About the only way for this to happen is if the US Navy is caught by complete and utter surprise. Have the US never break the Japanese codes and have them not have an active radar station. Even then it's hard to imagine Pearl Harbor getting caught completely off guard. I am sure Admiral King would have had air regular patrols.

The US was expecting something to happen and issued a war warning to all it's Pacific commands. Maybe have the Japanese diplomats talk about withdrawing from China, make Hull and FDR believe their embargoes were working. That's about the level of blindness you would require. What you describe is a Pacific version of the opening of Operation Barbarossa.
 
Only way the Americans would loose 4 battleships and not getting any Japanese is if they only realized the Japanese where there when they started dropping bombs on them. You need to have that newly installed SCR-270 radar station be put offline so they didn't detect the enemy planes approaching, nor would be able to direct the American navy too the place they where coming from. Next to that there where some American planes on patrol so they had to be shot down before they could warn everyone. God only knows how the Japanese would manage to maneuver an entire fleet near Oahu without anyone knowing. Kinda ASB.
 
Well, given the absolute failure of the Japanese to stage a successful sneak attack and their poor performance in the subsequent battles of 10 and 14 December, 1941, against an inferior USN carrier force, it is hard to imagine the war lasting past 1943 even with the situation you propose.

Regarding the points raised by Johnrankins, if Kimmel had not planned for this contingency as famously well as he did or somebody had misinterpreted radar signals, it wouldn't have mattered what kind of planes were sitting in their dispersed bunkers at Hickham. P-47s blow up when hit by bombs as well as P-36's. As it was, even F2As and P-36s would have been adequate against the Japanese pilots who did not expect to be met in the air while still approaching Oahu.

One thought does occur, however. Had the US lost the battle of Pearl Harbor as you propose with the heavy losses you suggest, the mood of the American people would have been much more demanding of revenge against Japan. Japan, on the other hand, would actually believe they might win the war and be emboldened to fight to the finish. This might have created a situation in which a negotiated peace was impossible. As it was, the Japanese failure at Pearl, coupled with the general inability of the Japanese to sieze other US and British posessions as quickly as they hoped led to the fall of the Tojo regime and its replacement by a government sufficiently palatable to the the US that we were willing to negotiate the armistice in June 1942 that secured a peaceful evacuation of Japanese invading forces from the Phillipines and other US and British territory, Japanese peace negotiations with the Chaing government in China, healthy reparations, and eventual Japanese entry into the war against Hitler.
 
If they would have been successfull in conquering the Phillipines, Indonesia would be next. Plus with an intact fleet they might actually beat the British navy.
 
OOC: Pearl Harbor wasn't exactly a US disaster even in OTL itself. The US didn't lose any carriers, and only the old battleship Arizona and the training vessel Utah were completely destroyed - the others were all repaired and returned to service. It had a much greater psychological impact than military.
 
OOC: Pearl Harbor wasn't exactly a US disaster even in OTL itself. The US didn't lose any carriers, and only the old battleship Arizona and the training vessel Utah were completely destroyed - the others were all repaired and returned to service. It had a much greater psychological impact than military.
OOC: Oklahoma wasn't, it was raised for scrapping, and still all of these ships were out of service for months-years, when the US needed them most
 
OOC: Oklahoma wasn't, it was raised for scrapping, and still all of these ships were out of service for months-years, when the US needed them most

True, but it's not the disaster that's etched on the 'national psyche', as evidenced in the thread. All things considered, it actually turned out very well for the United States, especially as the battleships were relatively immaterial in the carrier age. A major psychological blow, and a personnel and fuel-oil stock loss... but "what if Pearl Harbor was a disaster for the US" would have to involve losing a lot more than the OTL losses, particularly carriers.
 
If we did get hit hard at Pearl, and did not have the National Rearmament Act of 1939, with most if not all obsolete fighters being sent to countries needing it, then we would have probably launched an attack on Japan with aircraft carriers. The USS Enterprise, which was flagship of the fleet, surviving almost nearly every battle would have probably carried the B-25B Warthog, an impressive medium-bomber/heavy fighter to hit Japan with the Hornet to escort her probably. The Yorktown if you recall at the time was still heavily damaged in the Battle of Wake Island, and took four months to fully repair her.
 
OOC: Pearl Harbor wasn't exactly a US disaster even in OTL itself. The US didn't lose any carriers, and only the old battleship Arizona and the training vessel Utah were completely destroyed - the others were all repaired and returned to service. It had a much greater psychological impact than military.

9 / 11.

Some times the psychological victory can be the one with the deepest and longest lasting effect.
 
One thought does occur, however. Had the US lost the battle of Pearl Harbor as you propose with the heavy losses you suggest, the mood of the American people would have been much more demanding of revenge against Japan. Japan, on the other hand, would actually believe they might win the war and be emboldened to fight to the finish. This might have created a situation in which a negotiated peace was impossible. As it was, the Japanese failure at Pearl, coupled with the general inability of the Japanese to sieze other US and British posessions as quickly as they hoped led to the fall of the Tojo regime and its replacement by a government sufficiently palatable to the the US that we were willing to negotiate the armistice in June 1942 that secured a peaceful evacuation of Japanese invading forces from the Phillipines and other US and British territory, Japanese peace negotiations with the Chaing government in China, healthy reparations, and eventual Japanese entry into the war against Hitler.

So, that would have meant a much longer European war... although I don't know how much the Japanese actually helped. It seems to me I read somewhere that the American and British leaders, at least, were rather hesitant to let someone who so recently was their enemy rebuild their military too strongly. But, I supposed without the allies being able to remove their focus from the Pacific, they wouldn't have been able to focus on Hitler. And, assuming MacArthur is still working in the Pacific in 1943...
 
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So, that would have meant a much longer European war... although I don't know how much the Japanese actually helped. It seems to me I read somewhere that the American and British leaders, at least, were rather hesitant to let someone who so recently was their enemy rebuild their military too strongly. But, I supposed without the allies being able to remove their focus from the Pacific, they wouldn't have been able to focus on Hitler. And, assuming MacArthur is still working in the Pacific in 1943...


Well, most of the help was that with US forces not having to fight Japan we could throw our forces at Europe.
 
OOC: Pearl Harbor wasn't exactly a US disaster even in OTL itself. The US didn't lose any carriers, and only the old battleship Arizona and the training vessel Utah were completely destroyed - the others were all repaired and returned to service. It had a much greater psychological impact than military.

OOC: Depends on what you mean by disaster. It obviously didn't tip the balance of power but it did kill thousands of Americans while destroying two capital ships and damaging two others along with 180 aircraft being destroyed with only light losses for the Japanese.
 
It obviously didn't tip the balance of power but it did kill thousands of Americans while destroying two capital ships and damaging two others along with 180 aircraft being destroyed with only light losses for the Japanese.
Most of the ships that bit it were second-rate (ie, battleships) anyway, and with the infrastructure still intact, Japan basically screwed up the one chance they had of keeping the Americans out of the Pacific.
 
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