martok
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Joe D.
quote:
ORIGINAL: martok
Yes, the Japanese government -- or at least the war-hawks who controlled it -- genuinely believed that a knockdown blow to the U.S. Pacific Fleet would demoralize us to the point that we'd seek peace with them instead. They felt the U.S. was a "hollow giant" (if I'm remembering the term from the book correctly) that would not want to risk war with Japan, especially as at the time, we were more concerned about Hitler, Europe, and the subsequent situation in the Atlantic ...
If they truly believed that, why didn't Japan just invade the Euro colonial possesions in the Pacific without attacking PH and risking what they wanted to avoid in the first place?
Because the Japanese also believed that once they began their "Southern operation" (the invasion of Indo-China, Philippines, and the rest), that the U.S. Pacific Fleet would quickly move to intervene. Not surprisingly, this is something they wanted to prevent -- or at least delay -- for as long as possible, and Yamamoto was able to (barely) convince the higher-ups that an attack on our Fleet at Pearl Harbor was the best way to accomplish this.
Not that he wanted to fight America, of course -- quite the opposite (as most folks on this forum probably already know). But if Japan was determined to go to war with us, then he was determined give his country the best possible odds of winning....however slim they were in the long run. And so the Pearl Harbor operation was conceived.
quote:
ORIGINAL: Joe D.
Sinking a single U.S. gunboat in China is one thing, but attacking the U.S. fleet at port while expecting no retaliation in return was surreal, if not an extreme case of "group think".
Indeed. The more hawkish members of the government and Navy & Army commands do appear to have suffered from a collective bout of wishful thinking.
It's interesting to note that the majority of Japanese military officers who had actually been to the U.S. and were at least somewhat familiar with the American naval community -- including Yamamoto and Admiral Nomura (Japan's ambassador to the U.S.) -- did not seem to suffer from this delusion. I still wonder how events would have played out had they been able to make their superiors in Tokyo see reason (or at least reality).
quote:
ORIGINAL: Joe D.
quote:
ORIGINAL: martok
Guadalcanal certainly gave us the initial momentum in our offensive operations against the Japanese, no doubt about it. However, as you (again) pointed out, it was Midway that let us take the momentum away from the Japanese in the first place.
Not the momentum; in fact, according to Shattered Sword, "The losses at Midway did not radically degrade the fighting capability of Japanese naval aviation as a whole ... it woud take the hellish attrition of the Solomons campaign to initiate a fatal downward spiral in Japanese carrier aircrew proficency ..."
That statement might be accurate as far as it goes. (Frankly, I still find it a little hard to believe, but Parshall & Tully obviously know a lot more about the Pacific campaign than I do, so I'm more than willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.) However, even if that is true, it's still hardly the whole story.
Losing four carriers at Midway was a critical (and probably fatal) blow to the Imperial Navy in the long run, such that they were relegated to fighting almost entirely on the defensive after that. (And when that happens, it generally means you've lost the war, even if the inevitable defeat doesn't occur right away.) However good Japanese naval aviators were -- and there's no question they were damn good -- in the long run, it's not of much use if you're using your warplanes to primarily defend objectives, rather than attacking them.
Don't get me wrong: I am absolutely not trying to downplay Guadalcanal, and the role it played in the Pacific war. There's no denying that our success there was hugely important in our overall strategy to defeat Japan, and I'm especially grateful to our troops who fought -- and died -- there.
But without the victory at Midway -- or some other battle where we managed to take out a good chunk of Japan's carrier fleet -- I don't think the Guadalcanal operation (or one like it) would have been a practical option in the first place. So long as Japan retained a powerful mobile naval aviation strike force (such as they had prior to Midway), I have a hard time believing we would have made much headway against their forces defending their Pacific perimeter.
< Message edited by martok -- 5/31/2011 1:05:17 AM >
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"Evil is easy, and has infinite forms." -- Pascal
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Brokaw, AMC and Memorial Day weekend - 
The turning point was actually Pearl Harbor because of the US carriers not being there! 
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