Post by oldpop2000 on Apr 28, 2016 18:11:30 GMT -6
Responding to some points from earlier in the discussion:
American fire control was almost entirely mechanical with inputs fed in directly from rangefinders etc or by a small number of personnel, and transmitted directly to the turrets. Japanese fire control had several 'talkers' in the loop so (for example) the rangefinder data would be read out to the man who entered it, solution run and the result passed by voice to the guns. This is a significant loss of speed and accuracy but might not have mattered against any other navy because everyone but the Americans used basically the same system.
The performance of the Japanese fleet off Samar can be explained by systemic and personal fatigue. Their navy was bled white, with trained men moved out to combat units (and killed more and more often as the war went on). The ships not directly in combat, like the battleships, received more and more green men who needed training. Once the fleet left Borneo it was subjected to almost continuous submarine and aircraft attacks. Heavy losses (Atago and Musashi for two) plus the lack of Japanese aircraft and the few destroyers escorting the force must have made it clear that this was not a 'do-or-die mission' but a desperate and almost hopeless one. No human can go for days under continual attack without experiencing exhaustion, so it is reasonable to assume the Japanese crewmen were not at peak efficiency.
If Roosevelt had left the Navy at San Diego, it is possible it would have been attacked anyway, though surprise would certainly have been lost. Pushing the carrier fleet to Pearl Harbor strained Japanese logistics, so reaching the West Coast is unlikely but theoretically possible, and a strike on the US mainland would have been at least as terrifying as one at Pearl. On the other hand, the Japanese could have tried to fight Britain and the Netherlands without declaring war on the US - that would complicate Roosevelt's political position, but the US would have come in anyway I think. Or they could have declared war without a surprise attack, overrun the Far East and then raided the fleet once it got to Pearl Harbor. None of these are as purely effective as a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor strike but we can see that was not Japan's only option.
What they could NOT do was keep fighting in China and not go to war with the US; Japan could not buy oil from anyone but the US, Netherlands or Britain and the embargo was literally going to bring the nation to a halt unless they could get oil.
I suspect that he would have kept the four most experienced carrier air wings in Kaga, Akagi, Soryu and Hiryu with two battlecruisers sailing around Japan possibly out as far as the Bonin Islands. He would have detached the 5th Carrier Group consisting of Shokaku and Zuikaku, the least experienced and attached them to the Philippine invasion force to eliminate the need to fly all the way from Formosa to support the landings. This might have freed up Ryujo to assist at Wake but He might have used it to support the Malayan operation.
We must remember that Yamamoto was not sanguine about launching this attack or starting the war at all. He simply used what he termed, the best method of winning a short war because after that, it was over and he knew it.
BTW, the loss of the oil, affected the IJN but not the IJA or the nation that much. The IJN had about two years worth of fuel stored so it was in trouble without the oil in the Dutch East Indies. Amazing enough, the Midway operation used one full years worth of fuel, so that did not help the situation.