The Decisive Battle of Pearl Harbor

I read somewhere that Nimitz thought that losing the fuel tank farm and dry docks at Pearl would have added at least a year to the war.

I can’t remember where I read it though sorry, it was a while ago.





I’m not sure I understand that.

There is still the avalanche of ships coming off the US slips and it might get MacArthrur's fighting up through the Philliipines route totally thrown out of the window in order to get a launch field for the atom bomb.
 
nter strikes.

If the Japanese remain in pace for an extra day there is also a chance (10-15%?) that Lexington crosses path with the IJN replenishment group and kills it. Without that replenishment force nobody is getting home and time soon, including the big boys, since they would need to throttle back to economy cruise speed (12-15 knots).

Ahh, I didn't know that was a separate group, as you say no-one is getting home without that.

Out of interest, when the 5 carriers went into the Indian Ocean in 42, was the replenishment group separate as well?
 
If BOTH carriers are sunk, then the joker is wild. The Battle of Midway is out, now a Japanese walkover. Granted US industrial production COULD replace the two sunk carriers and build more, but the problem is civilian political morale. It's one thing to say 60 yr later that you're fearless and will take whatever casualties that are needed to get the job done, and it's another thing to actually take them at the time.

Has no effect on the Pacific battles, but it may have an effect on the Germany First policy at least until the building programme starts to flood the Pacific with ships.
 
So, in the opinion of the posters here, is there absolutely NO WAY for the attack to go better for the IJN than it did OTL? No possible way at all? Not just additional strikes but improved force dispositions? A pre-dawn night raid? Anything at all?
Oh certainly, you can improve the raid. With 20/20 hindsight, there's nothing stopping you.

Problem is, nothing you do at or to Pearl Harbor is going to change the outcome of the Pacific War once you involve the United States. You could possibly force Port Moresby to fall: Australia? Utterly, utterly ASB. The logistics of such an operation is impossible, not while Japan is tied up trying to supply its massive army in China, and all the miscellaneous barren pieces of rock in the Pacific with an overburdened merchant marine.

Besides, its Australia: a giant morass of deserts, swamps, and poisonous creatures. Why would anyone want to conquer that? :p

Pearl Harbor is a no-win situation for the Japanese from the start. The US was already in production of an absolutely massive number of CVs and BBs (18 and 7, respectively), starting with the Two-Ocean Navy Act in 1940. The sheer disparity in production capability between the US and Japan is staggering. Nothing Japan can do at Pearl Harbor could possibly win against this numerical superiority.
 

Cook

Banned
I read somewhere that Nimitz thought that losing the fuel tank farm and dry docks at Pearl would have added at least a year to the war.


There is still the avalanche of ships coming off the US slips and it might get MacArthrur's fighting up through the Philliipines route totally thrown out of the window in order to get a launch field for the atom bomb.

American landings in the Philippines were in October 1944, the first Atomic Bomb Test, Trinity, took place on July 16, 1945 in total secrecy. The Atomic Bomb did not influence strategy because quite simply it came so late in the war and the Generals and Admirals were not privy to the information.

The Philippines were invaded to isolate Japan from the oil, rubber and strategic metals of South East Asia and as an airbase and build-up point for assaults on the southern islands of Japan itself.

I don’t think it was the ships Nimitz was referring to but the fuel tank farm.
 
Try The Pearl Harbor Papers: Inside the Japanese Plans by Donald Goldstein and Katherine Dillon (1999) as an easy to find source

Quoting from there:

Akagi had 300 tons of drummed oil overloaded aboard

2nd Carrier Division (Hiryu, Soryu): 100 tons of drummed oil, 200 tons of canned oil overloaded

Cruiser Division 8 (Chikuma, Tone): 100 tons of drummed oil, 480 tons in trim tanks and waterproof compartments overloaded (emphasis mine)

Yes, they were at the ragged edge of their fuel envelope. OTOH, the nominal capacity of one extra oiler would be 8,000-10,000 tons of fuel oil. Yes, the IJN was starved for fleet oilers (the USN didn't even really have enough until late in the war), and scraping up eight (I earlier implied seven, sorry) for the OTL attack just barely got them there and back, as the decision to carry drums of oil illustrates quite vividly. Still, they had about 20 AO in the fleet at the time. One more is tough, but not ASB.

My notes have the non-destroyer elements of the task force with a combined bunkerage of about 47,000 tons. Eight DD would add about 5,000 tons more (don't have the class of each DD in the raid handy), and the oilers themselves have about 2,000 tones each (again, I don't have data by class). Nominal radius of everything except the DD is at least 7,000nm at no less than 16kts, though of course much less at high speed. IIRC the Midway attack force (the 12/41 one, not the 6/42 one) had another DD division which also used the Pearl Harbor oilers to refuel, so add another few thousand tons of tanks that need to be filled.

And to repeat again: the OP made no claims about the Japanese winning the war, and I didn't mean to imply any such thing either. I'm curious about the effects the OP POD would have had on the course of the war. The outcome is certain; Japan is going to lose, and quite thoroughly (possibly even, as I tried to make clear, FASTER than they lost OTL). HOW they lose can still be of interest, IMO. If it isn't interesting to you, that's fine.

I thank all those, especially CalBear, who have posted substantive information.
 
The concept of the negotiated settlement is plausible: just consider Vietnam in the 60s and Iraq and Afghanistan today. What I have to break is the propaganda that the WWII generation was so "selfless and patriotic" that they would silently endure any calamity to get the job done.

Why do you feel this is propaganda? What source can you quote that indicates that Americans felt anything but a "terrible resolve" to see Japan burn after Pearl Harbor?

Everything that I have read, studied, and listened to about this war (including my own grandmother, a "Rosie the Riveter" building B-24's at Willow Run) has led me to believe that American resolve and character after the events of December 7th was stronger than it has ever been in our entire history. Japan would have had to deal us a blow of a magnitude that was utterly beyond their means in 1941/42 to shake American morale to that level. Could they rattle our cage somewhat? Sure, (and they did!) but to break our morale to the point that we would consider even a negotiated peace is quite difficult to conceive.

Your comparison to the attitudes and social values of the 1960's and present day America is not valid. Forces were at work in the 1960's (social, political, economic) that did not exist in the 1930's and 40's. Indeed, the American psyche had been hardened by a decade of economic devastation that they were just seeing an end to in 1941. They would not give up on that hard won new prosperity lightly; the lessons of resolve and determination that had been pounded into Americans by the Great Depression were deeply set.

Few things in history are absolute, but I believe this is one of them.
 
Why do you feel this [What I have to break is the propaganda that the WWII generation was so "selfless and patriotic" that they would silently endure any calamity to get the job done] .is propaganda? What source can you quote that indicates that Americans felt anything but a "terrible resolve" to see Japan burn after Pearl Harbor?

One example: I was watching the History Channel on the "happy time" the German U-boats were having off the US East Coast right after war was declared. The way that they would aim the torpedos was to wait until ships had blocked out the lights from shore. When the Navy tried to get the lights turned off, the people refused, saying that turning off the lights would kill the tourist business.
 
DaveJ576, no, you are not imagining that response. baldy46's response did indeed offer a reply which did absolutely nothing to answer your question or support his claim in the slightest.

Basically he's clinging to the concept of the US suing for peace in a short war and upset that the total lack of evidence to support this claim has left him isolated.
 
The great failure of Pearl Harbor was not that the Japanese didn't destroy everything at Pearl Harbor, it was that they didn't hit it when the carriers were there. They might completely destroy the eight battleships there - of which six were in OTL salvaged and used for fire support. That might cause some issues during the island-hopping slog of 1943-1945. But really, in itself this doesn't prolong the war by all that much.

The most important possibility is that the carrier USS Enterprise, which entered Pearl Harbor at night on December 8 OTL, might be in engagement range of the later of the two waves you're proposing. Sinking that will have long-term ramifications for the Marshalls-Gilberts Raids, the Doolittle Raid, and possibly even Midway. It was the former two actions, both by Enterprise, that convince Yamamoto that Midway's hopefully strategic defeat of American carrier power was necessary.

Remove Enterprise, and you might butterfly Midway. The US will rebuild its carrier force and attack Japan in time, but will have to rebuild the logistical facilities at Pearl Harbor due to the greater damage you've caused them. That will take extra time. More likely, however, is that the IJN forgoes the Midway campaign and continues its naval campaigns southward, conquering Indonesia and possibly Australia. If they get all the Indonesian oil, they might last an extra year - pretty significant, all things considered.

You sadly forget that any United States Ship named Enterprise is prone to destroying 10 times its weight in enemy ships before going up in flames proudly. And then it's rebuilt and piloted by the same captain's that lost it the first time. Or am I thinking of Star Trek :rolleyes:
 
You sadly forget that any United States Ship named Enterprise is prone to destroying 10 times its weight in enemy ships before going up in flames proudly. And then it's rebuilt and piloted by the same captain's that lost it the first time. Or am I thinking of Star Trek :rolleyes:

Well, except for CV6, none of the USS Enterprises in the US Navy have had particularly impressive records. However, CV6 fought in most of the major engagements of the war and accumulated 20 battle stars (the most of any US ship in WWII). She probably makes up for several of her less-impressive ancestors.

In short, yes, you're thinking of fantasy.
 
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