What if...the Japanese had landed troops in Hawai'i immediately after bombing Pearl?

Sure. I can tell you how it all came unraveled. "Captain Trimble, USMC pulled his jeep to a stop just above the beach's tidal line and shut off the engine to take a break and monitor any radio traffic from his other outposts out in the darkness on his own PRC radio. Trimble massaged his aching neck muscles under his campaign hat and debated with himself whether to pour a cup of coffee from his thermos to ward off fatigue, as he still had several hours remaining before dawn.

He suddenly heard the distant yet familiar sound of an anchor chain grating against deck steel of a ship as the anchor let go offshore. Puzzled, he scanned the darkness through his binnoculars, until he spied the enormous mass of a darkend ship, the size of an ocean liner, several hundred yards offshore. "Now why would a darkened ship be anchored offshore and in a restricted area? That bastard is breaking all of the rules. There's no ships due in tonight or tomorrow" He wondered. He quickly fired up the jeep's engine and turned the portable searchlight and the jeep towards the darkened mass in the distance and turned it on, along with the jeep's headlights. The combined lights provided enough illumination for the Captain to see several boatloads of what looked to be armed men being lowered into the water alongside the liner.

"They're f&cking Japs!" Trimble spat incredulously. He unholstered his .45, jacked a round into the chamber and fired off three quick rounds skyward, alerting his outposts along the shore. This brought about a ragged return volley of 7.7mm rifle fire from the life boats heading towards shore. Captain Trimble killed the lights on his jeep and sped off to his closest outpost. Within seconds, he was in communication with his CO. as the first firefights were breaking out along the beach between the Marines and Japanese invaders."

 

The attack on Pearl Harbor succeeded beyond Nagumo's wildest dreams after two waves of bombings and torpedo runs. This is easily realized when one considers that Yamamoto was willing to lose 2-3 carriers in the process of this attack.

A third wave was not needed since Nagumo easily succeeded in his mission and turned for home.

I have read that one of the reasons that Nagumo turned for home without finishing off Pearl Harbor is because Japan had not planned for such a spectacular success!

If this is true, and please comment quickly if not, could Japan have landed troops at Pearl Harbor if they had planned for the attack being as successful as it was?

Thanks,

Bob Guercio

 

"If you can get your landing force ashore"; you haven't presented a compelling case that you will. In fact you haven't presented any real evidence that there is any likelihood of any Japanese troops surviving to get ashore. Far from being able to "grab the high ground" of the Koolah Mountain Range, any Japanese troops who do manage to land will be small, ad hoc, and disorganized parties incapable of organized resistance; they will be quickly hunted down and eliminated while still in any limited beachhead they manage to establish.

The IJN's bombardment of the "22,000 sleeping Army troops at Schofield Barracks" is a perfect example of your hopelessly optimistic analysis of Japanese capabilities.

1. Not all 22,000 Army troops on Oahu were stationed at Schofield Barracks.

2. Those troops that were asleep there wouldn't be in that condition once the IJN was sighted apparaoching Oahu.

3. Schofield Barracks was at the extreme range of the IJN battleship's gun range.

4. >From almost any practical bombardment direction, there was an intervening mountain range between Schofield Barracks and the sea.

5. In the dark there would be absolutely zero chance of aircraft spotting of the fall of shot, and only a generally inaccurate and ineffective area bombardment at extreme range would be possible.

6. The target area was too large and too dispersed to be sriously damaged by an area bombardment.

So relying on something like a battleship bombardment to nuetralize all, or even a significant number, of the Army troops on Oahu is just plain dumb.

Except that the "beachhead" is going to be under the heaviest artillery bombardment the Japanese have ever seen, and any troops trying to land on it are dead meat due to air and naval attack. That's providing the transports can even get within sight of the beach. A two phase landing gives the defenders 24 hours to annihilate the initial waves. You haven't provided for enough supplies to get ashore with the assault echelon, so they will be wiped out long before you can get any heavy elements ashore.

Problem is, the lagoon at French Frigate shoal is way too small to accommodate any thing like a "floating replenishment base", and the shallow waters to the southeast of the Shoals are not protected enough for any kind of ship to ship transfer of supplies during the winter months. The Lagoon at French Frigate Shoals was reported to be cramped with just once modern destroyer and two converted "four stacker" seaplane tenders in residence. There simply isn't room for your "vision".

There are some problems with these numbers and it would be helpful if you could cite the source(s) for them.

One of the major difficulties I see in your numbers is that you have listed them by at least two different categories (by type of vessel and by operation in which they were engaged) and there is sure to be some, and very probably a, significant overlap; in other words I believe you are counting some ships twice or possibly even three times.

For example, you list tonnage assigned to the Kra, and Malaya (Khota Bharu, Singora, Patani) landings which took place on December 8/9, then you list the Lingayan landings, which didn't take place until three weeks later, and those in Southern Luzon which I believe were four weeks later. It's my understanding that the Japanese quickly turned around most of the ships used in the early landings and used them again in the later landings, such was the shortage of their logistical shipping. If this is the case, obviously you can't "free up" these ships for use in an invasion of Oahu on December 7th or 8th, yet that appears to be the way you are counting the tonnage. Only by tracking individual ships can these numbers be assured of being correct.

As for your assertion that the Japanese enjoyed the use of large numbers of very fast (20+ knots) passenger liners which could make the passage between Japan and Oahu in just 7 days, I would like to see a list of these vessels. Moreover, there cargo capacity is suspect, unless thay have been converted from passenger to cargo use.

 

An opinion that has been hotly debated for all of the years since.

My personnal opinion is that Nagumo was a very poor choice as leader of the Kido Butai's attack on Pearl Harbor. As a "battleship man" I don't feel that he fully appreciated the new abilities of the aircraft carrier and wasted a once in a lifetime opportunity to strategically hammer the American base at Pearl Harbor.

A third strike as advocated by Yamaguchi might have taken out the drydocks, USN fleet oilers and the American fuel reserves.

This would however, only have extended the duration of the war by some unknown degree. Eventually superior American production capability (not to mention the Atomic Bomb) would have turned the war against the Japanese.

Directly into Pearl Harbor itself ? I can't see how such would ever be possible. The entire American defensive structure on Oahu was designed to prevent any such direct troop assault on the Pearl Harbor base.

The other option of the Japanese landing elsewhere on Oahu and fighting overland to capture that island is what this entire thread attempts to discuss, with much obvious disagreement.

 

Dabrob seems to be under the apprehension that the historical fact the Japanese were able to approach Oahu to within 230 miles, undetected, with six carriers and launch an air attack is all the evidence needed that it would be perfectly possible to approach the southern shore of Oahu to within a couple of miles, with an invasion armada made up of transports and landing craft, completely unobserved, and land thousands of troops on those heavily populated, and certainly not lightly defended, beaches without alerting so much as a single Shore Patrol detail.

It's useless to point out that the two events are completely different in nature and level of difficulty, and must necessarily, for his comic-book scheme to work, occur in sequence rather than simultaneously. Dabrob seems to be convinced that every single person on Oahu, whether civilian or military, was on the night of 6/7 December, 1941, either reposing in drugged sleep, deeply intoxicated, in the throes of a debilitating hangover, or rendered completely blind and deaf by some mysterious affliction that could only be relieved once the Japanese Ninja-like supermen envisioned in his "plan" were firmly ashore, and gainfully employed in shooting down barking dogs and insomniac drunks with their silenced pistols.

The "proof" of this concept for Dabrob seems to be that historically a group of Japanese staff officers were able to ride around Thailand in a commandeered bus, complete with "rented bar girls", without being immediately apprehended by their erstwhile allies, or alternatively, reference to the movie, "The Dirty Dozen". I personally prefer to take history, even what Dabrob seems to think of as a compeletly plastic and pliable "alternative history", somewhat more seriously.

 

I note that no citation of any authority for this data has ever been posted.

It's not true that no nation was willing to sell oil to the Japanese in the latter half of 1941, just that her traditional major suppliers were not. Japan continued to seek oil for sale and continued to need tankers to carry any oil they managed to purchase. In addition, well into the latter half of 1941, Japanese tankers continued to carry oil shipments which had been purchased in the months preceding the embargoes. It's not self-evident to me that any significant number of tankers were idled for a significant period of time by Japan's oil situation in 1941.

Moreover, since a number of civilian tankers were requisitioned prior to, and during the war, by the IJN for use as fleet oilers, it's equally possible that many, if not the majority, of these tankers were, in December, 1941, in naval yards undergoing conversion for use as naval auxiliaries.

 

Naval gunfire support from escorting IJN light cruisers, destroyers, minelayers, gunboats etc is recorded mor e the majority of the OTL Japanese beach landings.

IJN heavy cruisers were assigned to that task at Wake #2 and Midway also though I have found no records of them actually firing those assignments.

It is granted that Japanese battleships never fired "over the beach" in support of troops landings but then, I DON'T call for them to do so in my ATL scenario either. Their only firing is area fire directed well inland at large targets like USAAF airfields and barracks complexes. Surely you remember that such missions were indeed fired against the Guadalcanal airfield, though only with limited success since they were done at night.

I look forward to whatever new ammunition data you can find.

Exactly the same can be said of the KB's approch for the OTL air raids yet the Japanese accepted that risk and attacked anyway. Why would my ATL Japanese be more cowardly than the OTL Japanese ?

As I have previously described in earlier postings, the OTL Japanese were listening to peacetime commercial Hawiian radio station marine weather forcasts and would have had a fairly good appreciation of the future weather conditions to be expected. If a hurricane should happen to come along then, Yes, back home to Japan they go. Shit happens.

Yes indeed my ATL Japanese take the same historical risk that the KB did by crossing the 200 mile line (from Oahu) at sunset on Dec.6'41 to begin their high speed run in. Again, as previously mentioned, three Washington authourized repatriation visits to Hawaiian waters by OTL Japanese cargo-liners (reported in Prange's "ADWS") had convinced Tokyo that the real US air patrol line was that 200 mile limit and that the beginning of air attacks would be the 100 mile line. Not at all true in reality but that is what the Dec.6'41 OTL Japanese believed. My ATL Japanese woud be no different.

Again, exactly the same risk that the KB accepted in the OTL. B-17s easily had the range to bomb at 240 miles out but that was the distance that the KB launched their 1st air strike wave from because they believed that the Americans on Oahu were only rarely serching out to even 200 miles. At 240 miles they felt compoletely safe from what they thought was a US first attack range of only 100 miles.

And, as we know well some 68 years later, B-17s couldn't effectively level bomb moving ships in clear daylight, let alone at dawn, dusk or in the dark of night.

Agreed but then, there were no Sunday morning US shore batteries on the east coast where I have sent them to escort the 9 bombarding CF battleships.

I don't feel that to be the case. My ATL Japanese invaders are really just trying to sneak ashore and use the darrkness to hide their infiltration movements into their assigned pre-attack positions. The silenced pistols would only be used when discovery (and a likely to result alarm raising) was the other alternative. American anti-sabotage sentries were assigned to important targets like road and railway bridges, city water wells, to parked warplane protection and from that other poster's source, important buildings like the downtown Honolulu telephone exchange. Their actual attacks on those assigned targets would be scheduled for 0615, not before, except for a very few carefully selected targets such as that exchange hub.

Just as can be said about the entire start to OTL Japan's Pacific War. The discovery of one invasion force COULD have de-railed the entire bag of Japanese offensives against Malaya, the Phillipines, Guam and Pearl Harbor.

Yet parts WERE discovered by the Allies (the Malaya bound invasion convoys and the IJN minisub sunk at PH) well ahead of time and the whole of Japan's attacks were NOT de-railed by any means.

In fact, all were still spectacularly successful (tactical & operational surprise) attacks BECAUSE the still peacetime Allied forces weren't yet built up to anything even near warfighting full speed.

A distressing fact that my ATL invasion of Oahu is designed to take full advantage of.

 

Harry Turtledove wrote a fictional book on a fictional Japanese invasion of the Hawaiian Islands. Its a good read 'Day of Infamy' i believe is its name. At any rate, as he points out, Supply would be a major problem for the Japanese to occupy the Island. Apparently the Islands aren't great for 'living off the Jungle' or growing much food, which was largely imported from the mainland USA. Fishing, of course, was the easiest method of getting food, but this would be limited to close-to-shore fishing by sail-boats as fuel became an issue (and restricted to Military service).

Military resistance to the Japanese Occupiers would be virtually impossible, the Islands being small and not providing the 'Resistance' with much sustenance (unlike other pacific islands). The Japanese would not be able to bombard the West Coast with planes as the distance was too great, and the USA would obviously begin a buildup on the West Coast.

Eventually, USA Bombers would fly over the Island, whose locals would be suffering greatly due to shortages of just about everything. In Turtledoves book, they resort to eating pigeons for any sort of meat and all are in some sort of level of starvation, apart from the Japanese collaborators.

The USA would eventually re-invade Hawaii, where there would be strong resistance despite the Japanese being undersupplied.

All in all, I don't think it would have made much of difference in the grand scheme of things, if not buying Japan some extended time as supplying Hawaii would be a monstrous task for them.

 

As has been clearly presented from the start of my participation in this discussion. The troops and shipping historically used by the OTL Japanese at Luzon, Wake, Guam and the Gilberts are sent by me to Hawaii instead. Are you only just now figuring this out ?

Historically, it was two weeks before the first US reinforcements arrived onOahu as per page 214 of Chapter VIII: The Hawaiian Defenses After Pearl Harbor . Page 215 of that same source presents the historical debates about further US reinforcement of Oahu and makes for interesting reading.

In the case of my ATL invasion of Oahu, with the KB's carriers and CF battleships stil roaming Hawaiian waters in support of the ongoing invasion fighting, I'd think any US reinforcement of Oahu at all to be limited to a few cargo trips by US submarines, if any at all.

Pages 197 & 198 of Chapter VIII: The Hawaiian Defenses After Pearl Harbor highlight the historical USN forces that were ordered transfered from the Atlantic to the Pacific Fleet after Dec.7'41. It seems that there wasn't much available since only 3 BBs and a carrier were ordered to be transfered.

If you say so, I guess. That historical USN strength is still much less than my ATL Japanese would retain in Hawaiian waters in suppport of the ongoing fighting.

And I'd bet that you think the with all that money saved, the US government would cancel the entire concept of income taxes too.

The more important question is, in my ATL, how many of the 22,000 24th & 25th Division's US Army soldiers, sleeping at Schofield Barracks at 0614, would be alive and able to carry a rifle, any rifle at all, after being bombarded by 16" and 14" IJN battleship shells ?

 

Hello dabrob,

Iam not very versed about the PTO as such. But I find it very interesting to follow on on this thread.

I could imagine that the Japanese actually did have a look or consideration into maybe occupying Hawaii - however I would tend to believe that their primary interest towards South-East-Asia led them to believe that a sucessful strike against the USN would buy the time they expected to need in order to achieve their primary intension without having to fear much opposition from the USA.

A commitment towards occupying Hawaii would have streched their recources or military capabilities to such an extend that it would have reidded them of proceeding south.

In the end - of Hawaii being occupied - it would have ended just as Mussolini above describes and the Japanese could not have pushed south due to the ongoing comittment towards Hawaii.

So what would have been the "benefit" for Japan to try and occupy Hawaii?
Hitler might have very well taken England by deploying all his recources against them - it would have cost horrendous losses in man and equipment - as such making an attack on Russia impossible for the near time and even allowing Stalin to achieve his goal far more easier.

Due to this reconsideration Hitler decided to abandon the war against England such as the Japanese cancelled their intensions towards occupying Hawaii (if they ever considered it).

Regards
Kruska

 

Certainly an interesting interpretation but I thought that the first of the series of PRC mobile radios wasn't developed until the late, late 40s ? I could see Captain Trimble having a BC-611 "handi-talkie" with him in his jeep but according to BC611 they weren't even patented by their designer until Feb.20/1942, so how would he have one on Dec.7'41 ? With a range of only 3 miles, one wouldn't do him much good anyway.

I think it much more likely that as per 25th Infantry Division Association: Pearl Harbor your Captain Trimble would be trying to report with a bugle call rather than a radio call.

Amazing timing that he just happened to stop for a coffee break on THAT beach at JUST the corect time to hear an anchor let go but, no matter, it MIGHT indeed have happened that way.

Just a an American submarine MIGHT have surfaced right smack in the middle of the Kido Butai's formation as it launched that first air attack wave at Oahu. A risk that the OTL Japanese accepted, just as my ATL Japanese would have to accept for their beach landings.

Please explain how he could possibly conclude that several boatloads of men, wearing what appeared to be American uniforms, heading for a beach where the US Marines were known to practise amphibious landings, were indeed Japanese invaders ?

From several hundred yards away, at night.

And why would he then fire at them ? Your Captain Trimble seems to be just a little too trigger happy to be in charge of anything or anyone.

Why would there be US Marines dug in along that beachfront when General Short had ORDERED a level 1 anti-sabotage alert ? How was a Hawaiian pineapple farmer of Japanese descent going to sabotage some grains of beach sand ? If any US Marines were out on duty that night, they would surely have been nearly two miles away, at the other end of Bellows Field, guarding the USAAF warplanes parked there, against sabotage. As ORDERED by General Short.

Captain Outerbridge of the OTL USS Ward tried the very same communication thing right after he had sunk an IJN minisub outside of the Pearl Harbor entrance channel at 0645. He sent a seconf radio report in at 0700. Once the on shore USN offficer in charge was finally located on that peacetime Sunday morning, all he could think to do was to ask for further confirmation. So, by the time that the OTL Kido Butai air attacks began at 0755, no warning at all had gone to the American Pacific Fleet.

Similar happened within the US Army when a radar tech at Opana Point telephoned in to report a large flight of inbound planes. The new officer at the fighter control centre considered that the planes might be inbound USN carrier air from the expected USS Enterprise or possibly an expected flight of B-17s from San Francisco and so told the radar tech to not worry about it. Yet again, no alarm went to the Army defenders of Oahu , nor to the USAAF nor to the Pacific Fleet's warships.

Two other American radars on Oahu tracked the two IJN cruiser scoutplanes that overflew Lahania Roads and Pearl Harbor at about 0630 on that OTL morning. Because the US radars had no IFF system fitted, yet again, no alarm was sounded to alert Oahu of the Japanese attack.

The internet is fillied with eyewitness reports of the OTL PH air attacks wherein many references are made to the numerous false reports of Japanese landings made at that time. Each was checked out by small patrols and found to be false but it should be noted that major US Army forces were NOT sent "galloping hither and yon" all over Oahu on "wild goose chases". Nor was ANY CAC gunfire opened on map co-ordinates. General Short's staff asked for confirmations first.

Are you noticing a pattern yet ?

The OTL peacetime American defenders of Oahu just DIDN'T WANT to believe that the Japanese were going to attack that supposed island fortress, and DIDN'T react, accordingly.

Why would that inherant American disbelief change for my ATL invasion Oahu scenario ?

 

I've never read Turtledove's fiction although I understand that his series has now expanded to include three Hawaii volumes ?

I found both John J. Stephan's "Hawaii Under the Rising Sun" and the Ziegler & Patterson book, "Red Sun" to be of much value in the preparation of my ATL Invasion Oahu scenarios.

 

I'm glad that you are enjoying it.

Genda certainly favoured a surprise invasion of Oahu along with the Dec.7'41 Pearl Harbor air attack that he was planning for Yamamoto but he was overuled by others higher in the Japanese chain of command.

If you have indeed been following this thread, then you already know that I disagree.

If you have indeed been following this thread, then you already know that I disagree.

I've already covered this question several times in earlier postings here but in very fast summary form, Japan's main benefit from capturing Hawaii would be it's value as a bargaining chip in early Pacific War peacetalks with the Americans. Holding Hawaii and the 500,000 American PoWs that would be captured there (and on the Philippine Islands etc.) would give the Japanese something of value to trade back to the US in exchange for an early end to the War (and Japan knew that she could NOT possibly win a long production war against the American's industrial might) and American recognition of Japan's new ownership of the NEI's oil resources.

The long term holding of Hawaii would indeed be a burden for the Japanese Empire but if early peacetalks didn't work out (and I doubt that they would have) then at least the nearest American Pacific naval base would be another 2,400 miles further away (to the east) from Japan. And thus the Empire would now have more time to consolidate it's new conquests.

The Japanese did indeed decide that taking Hawai was a good idea. Right after Doolittle bombed the Japanese Home Islands. By then however, it was too late. The surprise factor was gone, Hawaii's defences had been greatly strengthened and Oahu's defenders were no longer "asleep at the
wheel".

In fact, more than eager for revenge over the Pearl Harbor "sneak attacks".

 

Your reliance on naval gunfire to eliminate or neutralize the defenders is way overstated. The Japanese Navy had no way of providing pin point targeting, particularly at night. In order to take out the literally hundreds of crucial targets such as troop concentrations, artillery positions, coastal guns, FC positions it would have o resort to extremely intensive area fire. Oahu is a fairly large island as Pacific islands go and these targets were, for the most part, fairly well dispersed, and some were at extreme range for naval gun fire, others were behind mountain ranges or otherwise protected from direct fire and observation.

The Japanese navy, even if it deploys every last ship in it's inventory, simply does not have enough guns to accomplish what you are asking of it. Area fire takes time to destroy targets; days or weeks were needed for the USN to accomplish significant destruction of Japanese defenses later in the war on much smaller islands, even with pin point targeting capabilities. The IJN will have only a very few hours at the most, and during these hours will also be engaged in a battle with US capital ships. A few targets may be destroyed on Oahu, but the majority will remain active and in effective operation. It's obvious to any informed person, that your plan for naval gunfire to destroy the major land defenses of oahu is going to fail miserably.

Actually, the Naval General Staff did not accept the much lower risk of detection represented by the Carrier striking Force's distant approach to Oahu. It was coerced into approving what it viewed as an unacceptably risky plan by the threatened resignation of Admiral Yamamoto. That resignation was politically less acceptable to the NGS than the potential for the destruction of what they held to be "light forces".

In your scheme, the IJA would have to approve what would be viewed as a absurdly risky and tenuous plan, and would be extremely unlikely to be swayed by threats of resignation from a naval officer whom they did not particularly like anyway. That's why there is absolutely zero chance of approval of an invasion of Oahu on December 7th. 1941.

The risk is, of course, that once the invasion force is committed to an "approach to contact" 12 to 24 hours prior to the actual scheduled landing, weather conditions could easily change. Weather forecasting in 1941 was more art than science, so there is an appreciable chance that any landing could be delayed long enough for the whole scheme to fall apart. This is just one of the very many risks the IGHQ would have to assess in evaluating this plan. No one risk factor might be enough to make it unacceptable, but the cumulative risk would be so overwhelming that no planning srtaff would be willing to approve such a ridiculous operation.

No, this is another of your many miscalculations.

The risks of an extremely close approach to Oahu were exponentially greater than the historical approach of the Japanese carriers to within 230 miles of Oahu, and the Japanese IGHQ planners would have been, unlike you, acutely aware of the difference.

This is clearly hindsight. The Japanese didn't "know" any such thing in December, 1941; they thought along with the rest of the world that heavy bombers could be reasonably effective against naval formations. After all, this was the rationale for the development of the Japanese G3M and G4M bomber in which the Japanese invested so heavily

Where they would be almost totally useles since the Type 93 torpedo had absolutely no anti-aircraft or counter-battery capabilities and since land-based artillery and air attack would be the major threats to these vessels.

Silenced pistols are a nice "James Bond" touch but would have been mostly useles against the Military and police patrols that were abroad every night on Oahu enforcing the curfew.

Not really.

Actually, every Japanese invasion force in December, 1941, was detected and tracked by Allied intelligence for days before the landings. What really defeated the Allied defenders was the inability to predict where the invasions would take place and concentrate the meager forces at hand to meet them. In the case of Oahu, that wouldn't be true; an invasion of Oahu could only take place on a very few beaches that were already heavily defended in depth with artillery, troops, and, of course, air and naval units.

 

I could only make out Ray and his buddy

For my personal interest, how many US aircraft were or would have been ready to operate after the initial attack by the Japanese? let's say within the next 48 hours.

And how come the US planes and Navy never tried to go after the IJN carriers? at least Ray and his buddy would have done so if the movie script would have let them.

Regards
Kruska

 

According to Order of Battle - Pearl Harbor - 7 December 1941, there were 77 "combat ready" Army aircraft available immediately after the Japanese air attack on Oahu, consisting of 20 bombers and 57 fighters. In addition, there were 68 Army aircraft listed as "damaged" (but presumably repairable) consisting of 19 bombers and 49 fighters. I cannot find any data on Navy land based planes available immediately after the attack, but I know there were more than 20 operational PBY's on the morning of December 9.

In addition, the USN had two carriers in the vicinity with the following aircraft; 110 strike planes (primarily SBD's), and 31 fighters.

That's a total of more than 300 planes which could have been available within 48 hours after the Japanese air attack on Pearl Harbor. Granted, not all were first line aircraft, but they could have been used to attack any naval or landing forces the Japanese tried to operate near Oahu.

The US did try to locate and attack the Japanese carrier force, but in the confusion following the attack, the reconnaissance effort was fumbled and erroneous bearings given to the US carriers. The radar sites did track Japanese planes leaving Oahu, but this information was apparently either mistrusted or not communicated to the defense.

 

Hello Devilsadvocate,

thanks for the information - greatly appreciated.

Well I don't believe that these remaining aircraft could have made any significant stand against a Japanese landing. The carrier aircraft could have been a real thread to the IJN carriers though.

I was always wondering that the USN never succeeded in following and tracking the carriers after the attack - in the worst case a P-40 could have simply followed some Japanese aircraft.

Did the US have (and when -time) have a close estimate about the strenght of the Japanese forces - and if yes could this be the reason why they didn't try to attack them?

I don't wan't to hijack this thread so maybe you might just PM this to me?

Regards
Kruska

 

If I may add a bit of opinion on this topic. What if's can be fasintating and they can add considerable insight into actual events. Not to mention that in researching them one can learn a lot. However they have a tendency in some case to devolve into outright fantasy. So IMO (which is no way official) a "good" what if should:
1) Have a single reasonable well defined point of departure.
2) The what if should flow reasonably from that.
3) This flow up to the point of interest should be well described and documented.
4) The reactions of all parties should be considered.

So far this What if seems to be deficient in all of the above.

1) While Japan deciding on an invasion instead of a raid is a clear POD we have no detail on when this decision was reached. Furthermore their are other PODs wrapped up in parts of it such as doctrinal changes. These might be explained as part of the original POD but haven't been todate.

2) and 3) Little flow is visible we have jumped from the POD to the battle and things seem to be being added willie nillie as deemed necessary.

4) The proponent is dismissing any reactions from the allied side.

 

There is some real question if a third strike could have been launched and recovered on the 7th. While it might have damaged the drydocks it probably would not have taken them out for any great length of time if it managed to damage them a t all. I don't beleive the fleet oilers were high on the target list and while they may have taken out some of the fuel reserves in all likelyhood they would only have gotten a fraction of them. One of the main considerations however is that this attack was suppose to induce a moral failure in the American people. If Nagumo lost a bunch of plains much less a CV in launching a third wave this would decrease the overall percieved impact of the raid. So a third wave while it might have had some tactical benefit could easily have been a strategic error.

Indeed

However there were not all that many suitable landing points most were covered by shore batteries and some had very defenceable secondary choke points. There were 2 US division on the island plus additional troops and naval personel. The implication is that Japan needed to put 6+ divisions ashore to even have a chance of winning.

 

A couple of flys in the ointment for the discussion:

DabRob has an advance landing force making a landing in Kanohe Bay and off Bellows Field to start the land portion. NAS Kanohe was awake and busy several hours before the attack began in the OTL. Why? They were in the process of fueling, and readying three PBY for their daily partol missions. A fourth ready plane launches shortly before the historical attack as well. One of these three was assisting the Ward in the exclusion zone over an hour before the attack actually began.
The three patrol planes leave for their assigned sectors before daylight. It would have been nearly impossible for them not to have noticed a number of ships making a landing virtually on top of their base and right in line with their outbound flight paths.