Pearl Harbor WI: Pea Soup Raid

Surely Hawaii sometimes experiences some form of low dense cloud cover. Even if there can't be enough fog/vog/etc to obscure the targets, what happens if the weather is so severe (hurricane, say) as to make launching planes difficult? Even if the kido butai wants to risk hanging around until the weather clears, do the smaller ships have the oil to do it?
 

CalBear

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Let's restate Mote's origional suggestion:

"What if the weather had been bad in Pearl Harbour on the morning of December 7, 1941?"

And let's get some ideas happening.
Enough with the "Will it didn't happen that way therefore it couldn't happen" and the lessons in meteorology.

This is ALTERNATE History isn't it?

The weather WAS bad on December 7th. The Japanese had to deal with heavy seas and clouds at the launch point. A couple of hundred miles difference and the weather over Pearl would have purely sucked.
 

CalBear

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Umm...

Kido Butai calls off the attack and reports to Tokyo, America receives DoW and shortly later is informed that there was an attempted militant coup and investigations are going on as to who tried to trigger a war, along with an apology and financial compensation. American CVs in Pacific finish transporting aircraft to Marine garrisons across the Pacific, return to Pearl, and the Kido Butai strikes.

End result, Japan is in a better position for a year or so, then crumbles as historical.

Possible?

The Japanese force would have had to have traveled all the way home (or to the Mandates) to refuel. By the time they make it back there are double the number of P-40s on the Island, at least two squadrons of B-17s, twice the number of subs, and most importantly, a seriously suspicious U.S. military that will not have its fighters unarmed and lined up in pretty rows on only a couple of airfields but dispersed across two or three islands, and a fleet that doesn't treat Sunday as a day of rest.

It is important to remember that the Japanese attacks actually BEGAN in Malaya and Thailand a short time before the strikes on Pearl. This scenario leave an undamaged, reinforced, and alerted Philippines across the Japanese LOC from the Southern Resource Area and the Home Islands.

This pretty much an utter disaster for the Japanese although it might help Germany since the DoW from Hitler may not happen.
 
Surely Hawaii sometimes experiences some form of low dense cloud cover. Even if there can't be enough fog/vog/etc to obscure the targets, what happens if the weather is so severe (hurricane, say) as to make launching planes difficult? Even if the kido butai wants to risk hanging around until the weather clears, do the smaller ships have the oil to do it?

From what I recall of the vog, or even the locally known 'kona winds' which blow warm, is that its an overcast, not enough to obscure to the likes of 'pea soup'. Also you've got to figure that for the 1940s pollution, or anything that would contribute to smog, is practically nonexistant - and to a degree still is today thanks to the trade winds.
 
The Kido Butai was Northeast of Oahu, about 100-120 miles off the North Shore. Enterprise was on her way back from Wake, about 200 miles to the Southwest of Pearl. The two groups were close to 400 miles apart. There is almost ZERO chance of the two forces coming into contact. There is a slightly (but still hugely improbable) chance of the Japanese force encountering the Lexington after she makes her aircraft delivery to Midway.

If you look at the course tracks for all the players an accidental encounter is not in the cards.


This of course assumes the Japanese would basically go back the way they
came and that they would not be detected by search planes but with the
Pacific about to erupt, the sighting of the Japanese task force in Hawaiian waters might have encouraged Halsey to aggressively attack the Japanese task force.

I seem to remember Japanese search planes in WW2 could fly almost 400 miles and that was with their poorly trained fliers. With the highly trained pilots with the Peal Harbor task force and with an aggressive admiral like Bill Halsey looking for them, a naval battle between the Pearl Harbor attackers and the combined ground and naval assets in the vicinity of Pearl Harbor might have been interesting.
 
Pea Soup fog? That explains why the P-26's were still stationed on Oahu! :)

What did the actual Japanese attack plan call for in the event of bad weather over Pearl Harbor, or if the attack force encountered bad weather?
 
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