The navy itched to demonstrate its parity/superiority to the white powers.
They were desperate. The oil embargo + the Dutch East Indies also embargoing them + the Americans planning to build ten fleet carriers in 1942 and a hell of a lot of escorts and battleships meant they had limited time left to act before they got crushed. Roosevelt was clearly moving towards war with Japan, as could be interpreted from his rhetoric, rebasing the Pacific fleet to Pearl Harbour, the oil embargo, US volunteers in China, B-17s being deployed to the Philippines and the gargantuan military build-up. The US negotiating position was pretty heavy-handed too, demanding unilateral withdrawal from China, Manchuria and Indo-China.
Plus Japan fought well at Midway and lost the battle due to factors beyond their control - the US having broken their codes and the dive-bombers appearing out of a cloud at the absolute worst time.
Do you think it was luck that german and japanese codes were broken? Just one of the myriad of easily predictable weaknesses the axis leaders had to ignore before embarking on their doomed adventure.
When the US makes a “heavy-handed” demand that Japan leave China, it is not merely a question of the morality, of whose right it is to occupy the country. The real question is whose will is backed by superior might. And clearly, the japanese miscalculated. They were as wrong as one can be, and even they knew it. Surprised Drmanhattan didn’t give that yamamoto quote: ‘“In the first six to twelve months of a war with the United States and Great Britain, I will run wild and win victory upon victory. But then, if the war continues after that, I have no expectation of success.”
One can talk of the memory tsushima, of the luck of the dive bombers (forgetting all the things that did go wrong), of the parallel operations, of the crippled aircraft carriers that didn’t get swapped, but really, the whole war was stupid and decided before it began. If it wasn’t midway, it would have been another, even more dominating one. I think nimitz was crazy to give battle at merely better than even odds. Why give them the ‘decisive battle’ they want for some useless bait like midway, literally the only way they could possibly eke out a limited win, when the alternative is far more punishing for them? Just sit back, strangle shipping with ironed out sub torpedoes, fight purely training & PR battles until every battle odds estimate reads north of 95%. The fabian strategy doesn’t require weakness.
And although the difference in battleships & carrier production is stark I find the immediate and ever increasing disparity in Escort Carriers and Destroyers to be the most damning.
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Notes -
They were desperate. The oil embargo + the Dutch East Indies also embargoing them + the Americans planning to build ten fleet carriers in 1942 and a hell of a lot of escorts and battleships meant they had limited time left to act before they got crushed. Roosevelt was clearly moving towards war with Japan, as could be interpreted from his rhetoric, rebasing the Pacific fleet to Pearl Harbour, the oil embargo, US volunteers in China, B-17s being deployed to the Philippines and the gargantuan military build-up. The US negotiating position was pretty heavy-handed too, demanding unilateral withdrawal from China, Manchuria and Indo-China.
Plus Japan fought well at Midway and lost the battle due to factors beyond their control - the US having broken their codes and the dive-bombers appearing out of a cloud at the absolute worst time.
Do you think it was luck that german and japanese codes were broken? Just one of the myriad of easily predictable weaknesses the axis leaders had to ignore before embarking on their doomed adventure.
When the US makes a “heavy-handed” demand that Japan leave China, it is not merely a question of the morality, of whose right it is to occupy the country. The real question is whose will is backed by superior might. And clearly, the japanese miscalculated. They were as wrong as one can be, and even they knew it. Surprised Drmanhattan didn’t give that yamamoto quote: ‘“In the first six to twelve months of a war with the United States and Great Britain, I will run wild and win victory upon victory. But then, if the war continues after that, I have no expectation of success.”
One can talk of the memory tsushima, of the luck of the dive bombers (forgetting all the things that did go wrong), of the parallel operations, of the crippled aircraft carriers that didn’t get swapped, but really, the whole war was stupid and decided before it began. If it wasn’t midway, it would have been another, even more dominating one. I think nimitz was crazy to give battle at merely better than even odds. Why give them the ‘decisive battle’ they want for some useless bait like midway, literally the only way they could possibly eke out a limited win, when the alternative is far more punishing for them? Just sit back, strangle shipping with ironed out sub torpedoes, fight purely training & PR battles until every battle odds estimate reads north of 95%. The fabian strategy doesn’t require weakness.
I've always found this analysis enlightening: Why Japan Really Lost The War. The economic disparity between the U.S. and Japan is staggering.
Military History Visualized depicted this disparity in production quite well.
And although the difference in battleships & carrier production is stark I find the immediate and ever increasing disparity in Escort Carriers and Destroyers to be the most damning.
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