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The Pearl Harbor raid was a huge tactical success for Japan, but I wonder if the US would have been worse off if Japan had used the resources for its Asian conquests instead. My reasoning: War Plan Orange was idiotic. It was a crazy to try to send slow American Battleships to liberate or rescue the Phillipines. The Japanese would have had multiple opportunities to pick off the American ships one and two at a time as they travelled across the Pacific. In the meantime, the few U.S. carriers would be tied to the defense of the battleships. The battleships, lost on the high seas, would have carried a lot more sailors to their doom than when sunk or damaged in port at Pearl. Your thoughts?
I was going to put down some thoughts on this but the old adage comes to mind...
Better to remain silent and let people think you the fool than open your mouth and remove all doubt
Or something to that effect.
Oh very well...Oh, come on now, be brave, we fools love company.
Yamamoto was opposed to the Pearl Harbor attack.I wonder if Yamamoto, Genda, or any of the other planners ever considered the idea of not attacking at Pearl Harbor?
The Japanese knew 2 things that the Americans could churn out warships like printing paper and the Japanese couldn't.
Sink 100 ships and face 1000 more.
The Japanese government was spending something like 20% of its GDP on its fleet before attacking the US, Netherlands East Indes, and the British Imperial possessions. The US was spending about 4% and still out-building Japan.Hmm I do admit to not being a Naval expert, but "the internet" says it took on average 20months from initial build to commissioning an Essex class USN aircraft carrier in WW2, and about 36months for the IJN to do the same for the Hiryu carrier for example. So while there does appear to be a disparity in capacity there, perhaps "churn out like printing paper" is slightly over-doing it in terms of USN capacity?
That of course also takes no account of the loss of Navy personell, or all the planes/pilots and so on that would be lost. I`m a bit unconvinced that if the USN in Pearl Harbor HAD lost a load of carriers as hoped for by IJN, that the Americans would have just said "oh well" and built another fleet just like that. Figures suggest it would have taken at least 2 years to do that, which leaves rather a lot of time for other things to occur...perhaps someone more knowledgable can step in and give some guesses about not only the "time to commission from order" but the likely effect of having to do several at ONCE on that time period ? I have absolutely no idea whatsoever about that.