the idea for pearl

how did Yamamoto cmae to the idea of attack pearl with his carriers and not whit the whole fleet?? sinking ships with bombers was a recently new tactic

10 april 1940: CL koningsbergen was sunk by britisch aircraft.
June to spetember 1940: serveral italian destroyers are sunk off north africa by britisch bombers
11 november 1940: air strik at taranto. 3 italian BB's damaged, one sunk


did all this influenced Yamamoto to develp his plans? and if it did. what would he have done when all this didn't happend? would he still try to sink the American fleet with only his CV's?

 

Billy Mitchell demonstrated back in 1921 that it was quite feasible:

 

Mitchell was eventally court martialed for his new way of thinking and proving that the airplane would become a great weapon. He wasn't exactly tactful either. He even went so far as to say we would be at war with Japan.

 

Mitchell said rather more than that, and not at all tactfully. He positively stated that navies were now obsolete; all this accomplished was to really tick off the US Navy brass.

 

Why didnt he just move to the U.S army air force?

 

The Army Air Corps (of which he was an officer of) was still in it's infancy. Remember, that was the 1920's.

 

Ohh sorry, his predithion about japam mayed it sound like the late 30s

 

euhm, i'm talking about yamamoto. i'm wondered if the naval attack on taranto inspired him to attack pearl with his aircraft? and if it did, what would he have done when the attack on taranto never happend?

 

IIRC Pearl was planned before Taranto, but Taranto did give the idea legitimacy.

As a question - why did the Japanese not also bombard Pearl with gunfire (like the British did to the French) - was it simply because they did not want the risk of both a naval engagement & the possibility of US bombers getting at the Japanese fleet?

 

i've been asking that question to meself too the last day's. if you wanted to hurt the americans the most, you should have completly destroyed pearl (oops, forgot to launch wave three and destroy their repairing facilaties)

if i was yamamoto, i would have sended most of the IJN and just take pearl and use it as my onw base, forcing the USN back to it's west coast. (and use it as a warning lookout post. not to mention that those carriers on their way back to pearl, low on fuel, have serieously trouble of reaching a new port)

God, i'm so good

 

The shipyard should have been hit harder, but more important a target should have been the fuel farm!!! You can see it in the photos of Pearl, but they didn't hit it!!! Luckily for us, anyway...

Say, did any Americans catch the program the Hysterical Channel had on Pearl Harbor the other night? I think it was "The Lost Evidence." They also did Iwo Jima. I actually liked both shows! They showed a graphic representation of the tunnel system on Iwo (which I've been in) and it was wild!

 

you've been in the tunnel system of iwa jima? lucky you, and how were they?

 

The Pearl Harbor attack was supposed to be a fast, hit and run raid; the makeup of the task force was ideally suited for such a mission. Sending more ships would just use more fuel without adding to the unit's striking power, as well as giving any American submarine they might encounter more targets to shoot at (they had no idea how crappy the USN torpedoes were, of course...). The big failure of the attack, I have to agree, was the fact that the oil tank farm wasn't even scratched. A dozen or so Kates, with GP bombs, could have turned the entire complex into an inferno and forced the fleet to withdraw to San Diego, thus making American counterthrusts much more difficult and, at the very least, prolonging the war. Not hitting the ship repair shops and the sub base were also major errors of commission on the part of the Japanese. Nagumo's caution prevented the launching of the third wave which would likely have taken care of these problems.

 

but instead of a hit and run attack, the could have sended the fleet and occupy Pearl. (a whole naval base, almost for free )
okay, most things were reduced to rubbel but with a little bit of repairing it is up and running. and, you can take the american cruisers, repair them and use them for you're fleet.

 

A large fleet would proberby be spotted and engaged. My knolege of this subject is sctecy at best but i think the success of the operathion was because of the small size of the carrier task force

 

well, i don't know how big the attack force was but six carriers with their protection escorts is already big. and, they sailed out of range of the american patrol planes untill they reached pearl (and by then the americans stopped looking intensively)
just look at the movie "pearl harbor". there's a scene where high admirality is discussing where the japanese fleet is. one of the maps is showing the area where the patrol planes can search. the entire north of the paciffic is unpatrolled

 

I believe this third attack wave -thingy is just a myth.

 

To plan to occupy Hawaii would have been a much more difficult operation. The carrier force that attacked did not have the capabilty to invade and hold. The troop transports and accompanying logistics would have made the force too large and slow and the chance of detection would have been greater. If the advantage of surprise was lost things could have gone very badly for the Japanese...as was demonstrated at Midway and nearly every naval battle after.

 

I think speed might have been an issue as hinted about the troop carriers.

All the carriers were new(ish) and therefore reasonably fast. They would have been able to put with them a selection of fast crusiers, destroyers and maybe even fast BB's.

But to take a traditional naval task force might have involved more surface ships which would have slowed down the fleet.

And speed was important as every extra hour they took just increased there chance of being spotted.

FNG

 

AKAGI and KAGA were at least fifteen years old, although both had been extensively modernised before the war. HIRYU, SORYU, SHOKAKU, and ZUIKAKU were all much newer, being contemporaries of the American YORKTOWN-class ships.