December 7, 1941

[Nanker]

I just find it hard to believe that the timeline on their strategic objective was so tight that they couldn't make any adjustment to take advantage of an enormous tactical advantage that was staring them in the face. If they had hung around for another 36 hours or so, they might have been able to do so much damage to the infrastructure at Pearl (as well as Hickam and Wheeler) that the Pacific Fleet may well have never recovered enough to be a decisive factor. In the hindsight of amateurs, it just seems like a golden opportunity cast aside in the name of mindless rigidity.

 

 

There's always been something hilariously ironic to me about the concept of a country with virtually no natural resources starting a war with a country wildly rich in natural resources for the purpose of trying to force them to give them the resources they desperately need to prosecute a war.

They would have attacked the carriers had they been in port as they should have been, but bad weather had kept them at sea. Once they blew their wad with the two air strikes, they lost their nerve and retreated. They did not want to engage our carrier fleet without the element of a surprise attack on their side.

 

FWIW, my uncle Raymond was on the Arizona that day. He went topside to take watch duty, relieving his best buddy who went below to sleep in the same bunk Uncle Ray just left. He never saw his buddy again.

[Simon]

 

It pretty much was, actually. The Japanese offensive in the Pacific from December 41 to April 42 should be taught at staff colleges;

.....

Japan was so completely incapable of prosecuting a modern war it's a miracle they managed as much as they did...which also demonstrates how unbelievably good their initial war planning and operations were, to overcome that economic deficiency.

Just wanted to say thank you for taking the time to do that.

Much appreciated...

[boyst]

 

It pretty much was, actually. The Japanese offensive in the Pacific from December 41 to April 42 should be taught at staff colleges; it is unbelievable how tight the schedule and intricate the maneuvers and interplay of landings and offensives were. (For just one example: Bataan held out for so long in no small part because the Japanese had scheduled the 5th Air Fleet and 48th Division to participate in the attack on the Dutch East Indies at the end of February.) The campaign is a case study in staff work and economy of force. It's also why the Japanese basically got their asses kicked in every campaign afterwards; they spent a year planning their initial Pacific campaign, but they never had that luxury of planning after that.

 

Plus, I think the Japanese carriers (or their accompanying escorts) may have been fuel-critical. They may not have had enough fuel-oil to stick around another day; they certainly didn't have enough to feel comfortable about it. Again, logistics rules all - fuel state was always a concern. Outside of immediate littoral operations (South Pacific, the English Channel, the Mediterranean, where a fleet base was never far away), I can't think of any naval operation by any navy in World War 2 that wasn't dictated to a large degree by fuel availability. Hell, Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher won three of the six (or five, if you're a purist) carrier battles ever fought, and was relieved of command basically for being overly worried (if not paranoid) about his fuel state.

 

Plus, it was simply against Japanese fleet doctrine. That's a much more subtle point that even most professional historians miss. Japanese fleet doctrine was fundamentally Mahanian/Nelsonian, leavened with the misinterpreted bushido code they fought by, which basically amounted to the doctrine that the opponent's main battle fleet was the battle objective (Mahan) and was to be destroyed in a single decisive engagement (Nelson). And not only were other objectives secondary (which is Mahanian doctrine), but their bushido code insisted that battle was between warriors - infrastructure wasn't attacked for its own sake, because there was no honor in it. Doctrinal adherence is one of the root causes of Nagumo's fatal indecisiveness at Midway, and Mikawa's incomplete victory at Savo Island. (It's also part of the root cause of Halsey's mistakes at Leyte Gulf, Wright's at Tassafaronga, and Admiral Phillips' defeat off the Kuantan Peninsula. The cold, dead hand of doctrine isn't just a Japanese phenomenon.)

 

 

 

The fleet would have recovered, but the war would have been much longer. Most people don't know, but Pearl Harbor wasn't the main Pacific Fleet base in 1941 (its home port was San Diego), it was still considered just a forward base. The Pacific Fleet wasn't stationed there until May 1940, and only as a "temporary" measure along with the oil embargo to pressure the Japanese into ending the war in China (spoiler alert: it didn't work). But destroying the port infrastructure would have forced the fleet back to San Diego until it could be rebuilt (or until the US Navy developed "mobile base" capabilities where they could stand up a forward base from literally nothing,,,which they didn't have until 1944.)

 

And yes, it is mindless rigidity...sort of. Again, doctrine...which is mindless rigidity in its own way. But that's in large part because it's vital. Doctrine is how large, complex organizations know what all their parts are doing (it's one of the reasons the German Wehrmacht was so effective - shared and well-understood doctrine, so you as a major commanding a battalion know what the battalions next to you is likely to do.) So you don't violate it on a whim. Part of the job of a military commander, though, is to know when it's appropriate to violate it, which is what makes Nagumo such a poorly thought of commander (and Spruance a highly respected, if somewhat controversial, one.)

 

And you accidentally hit on one of THE major contradictions in the historiography of Pearl Harbor in your post: "...the Pacific Fleet may well have never recovered enough to be a decisive factor..." But the standard interpretation is that the Japanese screwed up by sinking the "obsolete" battleships, and not the carriers. So...the Japanese crippled the Pacific Fleet by sinking and disabling a lot of irrelevant material, but leaving the most important elements of the fleet untouched? The Japanese screwed up by sinking the wrong ships, yet the Pacific was effectively powerless and critically overmatched for the next nine months? The battleship becomes "obsolete" because of the attack on Pearl Harbor...yet the Japanese erred by attacking the battleships, which were not obsolete before the Japanese attacked them? If you think about it, that interpretation makes no logical sense. And it's an interpretive error everybody makes (Willmott is one of the best naval historians around, and even he makes that mistake - in fact, it was reading one of his books that made me first realize "Hey, those can't both be true statements.")

 

And in light of all that, a lot of the inexplicable events and "surprises" surrounding Pearl Harbor make more sense. The Pacific Fleet battleline was the primary target, because it was the decisive fleet element in any battle. The carriers were merely adjuncts, and were secondary. Likewise, with the Japanese carriers being a supporting fleet element rather than a main element, it indicates the operation they were committed to was likewise supporting, thus secondary. And being a secondary operation, it by definition wasn't intended to be a decisive operation. And in that context, the decision not to further destroy Pearl or invade Hawaii makes sense: the fleet's disabled, the flank of the main action is secure, the secondary operation has achieved its objective.

 

 

That's pretty much why countries fight wars, though. To steal **** they need but don't have. Fighting over more ambiguous principles is a relatively new idea (even ostensibly religious wars, like the Thirty Years' War, were ultimately fought to steal other people's stuff. Wars are basically two Negans hitting each other with baseball bats until one agrees to give the other half his stuff.) The irony is that it does seem so ironic, because it's historically not ironic at all.

 

Regarding the Japanese economy...one of my favorite illustrations of how woefully unprepared they were is: when the first Zero prototype was readied for its first test flight, it was towed from the factory to the airfield by a team of oxen. A modern airplane, towed to the flight line for its test flight by cattle. How's that for a juxtaposition? Japan was so completely incapable of prosecuting a modern war it's a miracle they managed as much as they did...which also demonstrates how unbelievably good their initial war planning and operations were, to overcome that economic deficiency.

you didn't get laid much in both school did you? Nnnnnnnnerd

[Deranged Rhino]

I'm late to this thread and only just read it. to everyone contributing. Good stuff.

[DC Tom]

you didn't get laid much in both school did you? Nnnnnnnnerd

 

I didn't spend any time with my arm up a cow's ass, either.

[boyst]

 

I didn't spend any time with my arm up a cow's ass, either.

why not?