Were the Japanese really after our carriers at Pearl?

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"If" the carriers had been in harbour they "Might" have had a few planes up and seen the attackers coming in time to launch a defensive force. "Maybe" one of the carrier skippers was alert enough to keep his crews aboard and active (and sober!) Saturday night and Sunday morning. If, Might, Maybe....What's the point?
 
Yes, it would have. I think so.

Were the carriers in the plan? What do you think?
 
Some books claim the target ship UTAH was hit because it was occupying a berth/mooring normally used by an aircraft carrier?

it was in a line with two cruisers and a seaplane tender with another seaplane tendered moored off to one side?
 
tyrodtom said:
Another good reason no ship can stay at sea for very extended periods, particuarily in peacetime, is young males. I shouldn't have to explain any further.
Click to expand...

I believe young males of all Navys have traditionally had a couple of solutions for this...
 
"Francis, there's no question, the carriers were a target"

I am afraid that I was not clear, sorry (probably my poor English). There is no doubt that in Genda Fuchida's battle plan the carriers were the primary target. A lot (don't have the exact number - I don't have the book at hand) of torpedo-bombers of the 1st wave were ordered to attack the carriers. The dive-bombers of the second wave, who actually attacked USS Nevada, had orders to attack the hulk of the carriers sunk by the 1st wave.

What I tried to explain is that in the mind of the people who ordered or authorized the raid on Pearl Harbor, the most important targets were battleships, not carriers.

Best regards,

Francis Marliere
 
The Japanese HAD planned to recon Pearl Harbor better, but as I understand it, there were some US ships at the atoll where they'd planned to refuel a seaplane, and they couldn't launch that aircraft because it would have been detected. They also had a submarine recon that atoll before launching that seaplane.
 

That was the Battle of Midway.
 
Would a last-minute recon have affected the attack? Where was the point-of-no-return for the Japanese fleet?
How many days prior notice would the Japanese fleet have needed to change the attack date?

I know that the Pacific is big, but how far away from Pearl did the Japanese planners feel was a safe distance to remain undiscovered?

Thanks,
Jim
 
Remember that the Enterprise should have been at Pearl by Sat Dec 6th. She ran into heavy weather that delayed her arrival. Had she been there the war would have been very different in 1942.
 
I'm not sure but I don't think that the carriers would of had aircraft aboard while in harbour, I think it was the usual way to fly them on and off while at sea. Had the American Navy had it's planes ashore then perhaps a number of them may have been able to mount some kind of defence but it would have of been at the expense of the carriers and I don't suppose the Japanese would have minded taking heavy losses if they had of sunk the carriers. Had the carriers been sunk in harbour they may well have been re-floated and repaired like most of the other ships were, so if you are going to start a war by sinking somebody's ships then sink them in deep enough water where you know they will stay sunk. I think at the end of the day the whole idea of the Japanese attacking America was very very silly and was only ever going to end one way no matter where or how it was done. The Japanese would of have probably been better off attacking Russia at the same time as the Germans did.
 
Carriers are fairly fragile ships in comparison to battleships and cruisers, I not so sure you'd be able to refloat and repair them as they did the battleships.

Japan needed oil to continue even it's war in China, the only oil availible to them was in the DEI or the US. The US wasn't selling Japan any more oil and had to be neutralized to get oil from the Dutch East Indies.
Where would the oil for a Russian conquest come from?
 
Good points.
The Japanese needed to destroy the US Naval power in the Pacific to be able to expand their empire, and they did in part.
Possibly hoping the US would settle for a peace treaty?
And the British occupied with Germany in Europe would not be a big force in the Pacific.
Destroying the US carriers at Pearl would certainly give the Japanese almost unlimited reign in the Pacific.
 
At Dawn We Slept is an excellent book that dives into a lot of this. The Japanese were aware that the carriers were not in port at the time (due to recon flights but mainly due to the folks they had on the island observing), but they still hoped to catch them. There was some talk of staying around after the attack to see if they could find them.
 

The Russians had a large army waiting for a Japanese attack in the east which they later relocated (I believe) for the Stalingrad offensive. If the Japanese had of attacked the USSR along with the Germans then the Russians would have been fighting on two fronts and couldn't have moved those troops west or its industry east and if the USSR had of folded then the Japanese could have shared in the captured Russian oilfields. Due to isolationist policies America would probably have stayed out of the war unless it was itself attacked and that would have meant the Germans would of not needed to fight on two fronts either in which case then you have to wonder what would of happened to the middle east oil fields and ask if Britain would have still been in the war. I don't know if the carriers could have been repaired if sunk in harbour but I do know that most experts now believe that the Americans would have lost more ships if they had tried to escape Pearl Harbour during the attack. Without Britain or Russia the Americans would have been alone against both Germany and Japan when really it took all three allies together to win the war. I also believe the Japanese were mistaken in any belief that America would give in as FDR was well aware of the opportunities that winning such a war would give America, also the American public would not have accepted anything less. Some of this was the way things turned out and the rest is just supposition
 
OK, here's how I'm seeing this. They had no choice but to hit us somewhere. They needed raw materials, oil, rubber, ore, their future depended on it, they had the most powerful combined military in that ocean, and they were being squeezed out in their own backyard. Pearl and Manila kept us busy. The carriers at port would have been all the candy, but that wasn't dispositive. They had to do what they did. The longer they temporized, the more they were going to get kicked around.
 
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They didn't have to do what they did.
But if they wanted to continue on their present course, bringing all of Asia under the Co-Prosperity sphere by conquest, they had to get the oil to do it from somewhere.
 
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