WI: Japan attacks on Dec 8th

Beside the obvious question of why, I'm thinking the delay has to cause problems with the Kido Butai's fuel reserves.

If they got delayed by weather, or sailed late, maybe not, but if they had to stooge around for some reason...
 
That's an impressive amount of detail!

If you wouldn't mind, would I be able to bug you, if I do end up putting what I have in mind together, for a little more info? :eek:

What kind of info? My source has aircraft types (I lumped all P-40Bs and Cs together, for example) and squadron.
 
Beside the obvious question of why, I'm thinking the delay has to cause problems with the Kido Butai's fuel reserves.

Nagumo brought about 140-150,000 tons of oil to the party and burned maybe 2,500 tons of it per day (cruising) and 5,000 per day (during the 48 hours around the attack). I'm not seeing where another day mattered in the slighest compared to his available reserves.

In terms of the ships arriving back in Japan "nearly empty", the Task Force still had plenty of fuel, but ceased oiling at sea during the return voyage when it drew close enough to reach port without further fuelling. This is evident from the available fuel logs of the ships participating. When 2nd CAR DIV and 8th CRU peeled off for the Wake Island landings, they didn't run out of gas!
 
You might lose 50% of the aircraft, although I doubt it, history demonstrated that it took a lot of effort for the Japanese to take out P-40s (there is very little information on the P-36, but it was a slightly older design that hadn't been given many of the improvements that the early air war over Europe showed were necessary so...). Most of the pilots would survive, some might even mange to get shot down twice in a single day, rather like the Luftwaffe had happen on more than one occasion. One of the few nice things about fighting over your own territory.

Destroying a P-40 (or F4F) was hard, knocking one out of action for a day wasn't so much.
My casualty percentage is based on pulling a number out, and would include 'too wounded/shaken up to fly again today'.
P-36's: P-40's were upengined from the P-36, and they have similar characteristics. The P-36 is slower, less well armored and armed. P-26 'Peashooters' had no business being in the air with a hostile Zeke.
 
If the attack proceeds as OTL, there's about a 45 minute delay between the Japanese formation being spotted, and it actually being in a position to do something nasty to the airfields, plenty of time to get a lot of aircraft either up into the air, or into hiding for later launch.
 
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