TheMormonJosipTito t1_iy1fn1a wrote
Reply to comment by TotallyInOverMyHead in On April 2, 1941, a Japanese foreign minister asked Pope Pius XII to speak to U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, so as to avert "a war of mutual destruction” by marketrent
Even if they had sunk all the carriers it only would have bought them a few months. U.S. naval industrial capacity was leagues ahead of what Japan could produce and they would have been outgunned sooner or later. Really the only path for a win in the pacific was for the U.S. to decide it wasn’t worth it, though even still Japan would have collapsed from resource shortages and the later Soviet invasion eventually.
ppitm t1_iy1g1f3 wrote
Yeah, sinking carriers in their berths means that the flight crews probably survive. The U.S. would have just lost a few additional islands before building more carriers with a lot of pissed-off aviators on board.
SolomonBlack t1_iy1lpb7 wrote
I mean if they really took Hawaii I could see that stretching out to years because the Pacific is the biggest thing on Earth and ships only carried so much coal.
Yet for much the same reason I doubt Japan could have seriously taken and held Hawaii while doing all the other smashing and grabbing they needed to do. If they had the resources for that they wouldn’t have needed the war in the first place.
chronoboy1985 t1_iy1zzbi wrote
They would’ve had to constantly bomb every naval construction yard, dry dock and plane factory in the country to keep them from spitting out planes and ships, which would’ve been suicidal given the insane speed the US was pumping out war planes alone.
-heathcliffe- t1_iy26ivz wrote
Shit we were even building ships in the great lakes, unless Canada joins the axis, there is zero chance in shutting down America’s ww2 shipyards.
SolomonBlack t1_iy2cgjo wrote
A navy sails upon its stomach.
Every day underway appreciably depletes your stores. Once upon a time I could probably tell you how many weeks since we did UNREP by what sauces the galley had left. A1 was gone first and by like week three even the ketchup started disappearing. Somehow never the 57 sauce though.
Anyways point being no matter how much you build its got to sail across the Pacific to actually do any good. And the farther you have to go without a friendly harbor to drop into for resupply and repair the more problems you will have. It may not stop you completely but your logistical situation is always paramount.
Not for nothing did the US adopt the strategy of island hopping, instead of just building up a big force to sail into Tokyo Bay like our name was Perry.
-heathcliffe- t1_iy265xu wrote
They had no intention to take Hawaii, the attack on pearl harbor was an extreme strain on their resources, an invasion was literally impossible.
raziel1012 t1_iy25nr2 wrote
Their initial strategy was exactly to buy those months and then heavily fortify the islands and have a strong defensive area set up by the time US had built up its navy again. (Aka what you said: make it less worth it for US) They surely would be outgunned in the longer term, but they were hoping to make the mid term gain strong and force US to the negotiating table. Would it have worked? Who knows.
slicerprime t1_iy2c93k wrote
>Would it have worked?
No.
As has been said elsewhere, the scale and pace of US military production at the time was just too strong. That "long term" you mention would probably have been very short. Far too short for a "mid term gain" of drawing the US to the negotiating table. The US reaction would have been the same as it was, only probably even more pissed off.
TotallyInOverMyHead t1_iy3yty6 wrote
The long term would have included a collapsed Britain and a German Soviet Union, maybe even a Japanse Australia, at least in the minds of the Japanese.
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