WII:Pearl Harbor 3rd wave

[Yuhi33]

What if Admiral Nagumo had decided to proceed with the 3rd attack wave against the storage and drydock areas of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941?

 

[Markus]

What if Admiral Nagumo had decided to proceed with the 3rd attack wave against the storage and drydock areas of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941?

A precondition for this are night qualified pilots -which the IJN did not have- and at least knowledge that the US carriers were not in the area -which the IJN did not know.
A third strike could only be launched hours after the second by sending in rearmed planes from the first wave. That gives the defenders much time to preapre. Note that 20 out of the 29 planes the IJN lost were part of the 2nd wave which included only dive and level bombers, not the vulnerable low flying torpedo bombers. Further losses were 70+ damaged planes, so Nagumo (temporarily) lost 25% of his planes.

CalBear will probably provide a guesstimate of the number of fighters the US can get operational in time for a 3rd wave and the likely japanese losses. The 3rd wave would have hurt the US, but the IJN too. Probably less, but they can less well recover.

 

[mattep74]

Any planes that could would probably go up in the air with the orders to not engage the Zeros but attack planes with bombs only

 

[BlackWave]

Assuming that the Japanese had the strength and pilots and intelligence for this, the fuel depots might have been taken out--certainly, a bit more damage would have been made, but this may have affected Japanese flight capability for later, such as in Midway. It depends on the wave composition and the pilot training.

 

[Mote]

Assuming that the Japanese had the strength and pilots and intelligence for this, the fuel depots might have been taken out--certainly, a bit more damage would have been made, but this may have affected Japanese flight capability for later, such as in Midway. It depends on the wave composition and the pilot training.

Not likely that there would be significant damage. The attack objectives had all been met (with the exception of the missing carriers), the strike would take several hours to prepare, said strike would be going in against targets that the pilots had not trained on striking, and there would be low visibility while oil depots were hard enough to hit and set alight as it were. Meanwhile, the amount of American flak would probably result in extremely severe losses to the Japanese. 18% of the second wave's dive bombers (14 out of 77 that made it to Pearl) were shot down; including damaged planes that returned but were written off, that number doubles. That number will only increase and is likely to result in a crippling of the Combined Fleet's strike capability, which would be disastrous if it were to run into an American carrier.

 

[Bearcat]

Would have made more sense

for Genda and Nagumo to make the oil storage tanks part, maybe even the focus, of the second wave. Most of the big damage to the ships was done in wave one anyway. Hitting the American logistics in wave two probably would have been a better use of resources.

But long term? Japan is finished, no matter what they do, from the moment the first bomb lands on Hawaiian soil.

 

[CalBear]

What if Admiral Nagumo had decided to proceed with the 3rd attack wave against the storage and drydock areas of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941?

What 3rd wave?

No third wave was ever planned. No third wave was ever seriously considered in the planning for the attack. No third wave was ever seriously considered on the day of the attack.

The only time a third wave was even considered was after the successes of the first two waves when the junior officers blood was up. This tendency is why 1) there are PLANS & 2) Senior officers exist to rein in younger officers.

I would suggest you look at the actual losses (including mission kills) of the JNAF on 12/7/41. You will find that the American defenses had both stiffened remarkably between wave I & II, and Japanese losses were at close to a quarter of the strike force. The Kido Butai pushed a LOT of aircraft over the side on the way home as being beyond any hope of repair while many other were out of action for the rest of the day, and in many cases days afterward.

The third wave is one of the great non issues of all time.

 

[Bill Cameron]

for Genda and Nagumo to make the oil storage tanks part, maybe even the focus, of the second wave. Most of the big damage to the ships was done in wave one anyway. Hitting the American logistics in wave two probably would have been a better use of resources.

Bearcat,

That's a common belief and one I used to have too. I thought the loss of the tank farms would at the very least put a crimp in the USN's early war activities.

Then some kind soul showed me the actual numbers.

The US can simply park tankers in Pearl and carry on as if the tank farms never existed in the first place. Destroying the tank farms doesn't accomplish a thing.


Bill

 

[eltf177]

Another problem was that Kido Butai was low on avgas. A third strike would mean any US attack would be difficult to fend off.

 

[CalBear]

In addition to the relative lack of effectiveness, there is a different, extremely important point that always seems to get missed (much as it was in my initial post); Japan was not actually expecting to have a WAR with the United States.

The Japanese High Command was ignorant to the point of stupidity, but they had no desire to get into a protracted war with America. Beyond the many obvious military issues (Tojo and Co. could count factories as well as the next person) the U.S. was also, prior to the Embargos Japan's primary market for exports. The Japanese NEVER believed that could inflict a crippling military defeat on U.S. to the point that the U.S. would surrender to Japan.

Japan expected (foolishly, but consistently) that the U.S. could be made to accept a fiat accompli regarding the situation in the Pacific. The Japanese were willing to do what they believed was enough to get the U.S. to see reason, including removing all troops from the Philippines and allowing the Islands to be truly independent (as the U.S. was already planning to do on 7/4/1946), perhaps even the U.S. "Sphere of Influence". The Japanese also expected to have the U.S. accept an indemity from Imperial Japan as payment for all damages and for loss of life and limb. The few individuals who told the Powers That Be that the U.S. would not accept any sort of "reasonable peace" were either ignored or assassinated by the more radical member of the IJA junior officer corps (There was more than one reason that Yamamoto was given command of the Combined Fleet).

Since there was not going to be a long war, there was no need to plan for one. The drydocks, fuel depots and machine shops in Hawaii would not make a damned bit of difference in a 6-8 month war and would be of minimal use within a year of the attack. The Japanese were almost frightening accurate in how long it would take the U.S. to really get its feet under it (the first tentative U.S. offensive in the Pacific in the Solomons kicked off on 8/7/42, nine month to the day since the Pearl Harbor attack) while being stunning bad at predicting how the U.S. would react to being attacked.

There many other reasons that there was never a serious effort to make a third strike on Pearl, many of them have been articulated by other posters, but the simple fact that the Japanese simply never imagined that the war would last more that a year is one that can not be forgotten.

 

[CalBear]

...

CalBear will probably provide a guesstimate of the number of fighters the US can get operational in time for a 3rd wave and the likely japanese losses. The 3rd wave would have hurt the US, but the IJN too. Probably less, but they can less well recover.

After the two Japanese strikes, but before any sort of repairs on damaged aircraft were made the USAAF had

14 P-26 (which could actually be a threat to the D3A & B5N)
16 P-36A
25 P-40B
2 P-40C

for a total of 43 modern fighters and an additional 14 that were of use against the IJN attack aircraft. An additional 19 P-36 and 30 P-40 were shown as as damaged, I have not seen any accounting for the level of damage to the individual aircraft and how quickly they could have been repaired or made at least flight worthy (frex: If a plane has a fist sided hole in one wing and no way to get that fuel tank filled, it is clearly damaged, it can also clearly fly.)

The USN also had 14 SBD in flyable condition, these aircraft were, at the time of the attack, considered to be back-up fighters against enemy torpedo planes (they did carry two cowl mounted .50 cal, as well as the twin .30 cal for the rear gunner which had a 210 degree arc of fire), a role that they had some minor success performing prior to Midway.

As far as bomber assets, the USAAF had 4 B-17 D, 11 B-18A & 5 A-20 (which could also have been used as an anti-bomber interceptor with their 4 .30 or .50 cal fixed nose guns), while the USN had the aformentioned SBD, a few Vindicators, and 11 PBY.

The Enterprise was within shuttle range of Pearl Harbor well before sunset, of course many of the planes she did fly off were taken down by understandably jittery gunners on Oahu (a total of five aircraft of the sixteen sent off at 0618), but she had the potential of adding 16 F4F to the air defenses and 21 SBD to the bomber force (after subtracting the aircraft lost).

The American defenses showed considerable stiffening between the two strike waves. Given the fact that any third attack wave would arrive at least four hours AFTER the second wave departed, with the U.S. AAA defenses (which, as has been discussed here in the past, was fairly formidable, both Army shore installations and Navy weapons on board ship) fully manned and with plenty of ammunition, patrol aircraft and radars all in full operation, and over 40 fighters, it can be reasonably expected that IJN losses would have been fairly serious if any sort of third strike was attempted.

 

[burmafrd]

If the fuel farms had been a target then the research and preparation to attack them would have been as meticulous as the other targets were. Fuel farms of that era are rather easy to see from the air and find so that part is pretty simple. You have to hit them low in the base for maximum damage.
So finding them and destroying them would be of no particular challenge given preparation. Now doing it on the fly is another story.

As regards impact: just parking tankers is a no go. For one the US did not have that many tankers and then you have to take them from their other duties. ALso there is not enough room in Pearl for enough tankers even if we had them to replace the fuel farms. I believe that each tank carried the equivalent of at least 10 full tanker loads. Any long range attacks by our forces would have serious problems with the loss of the Pearl Fuel farm.
We could not support a fleet outside of SD or the west coast without it.

Now this would be a short term problem since repairing the tanks would take a few months at worst- filling them up again would take more time and result in a lot of tanker trips; the IJN would then have the oppurtunity to station subs to take shots at the convoys of tankers that would be needed. Those convoys would soak up a lot of escorts and resources in themselves.
Another question is getting the oil to the west coast in sufficient quantity as outside of SD at that time I do not believe there were any large fuel farms. And the oil there was needed for other things.

The fuel farms would indeed have been a worthwhile target if the IJN was thinking long term, just like the drydocks and machines shops and naval yard.

Any damage that will hurt your enemy has to be considered.
Problem was the IJN was NOT thinking a long war and that was another of their big mistakes.