How are they supposed to know their computing technology is worse than the US's? THIS IS SECRET RESEARCH!
Option A: vacate a few overseas territories. Option B: vacate all overseas territory, lose all industrial capacity, country under occupation, lose three million people . They went with option B, naturally.
Option A: roll the dice and see what happens, depending on a host of unknowable fog-of-war matters
Option B: vacate China and Indo-China, resulting in massive rioting and the collapse of the government since the public won't be happy about admitting defeat after tens or hundreds of thousands have died in the war.
Suppose the Chinese completely obliterate the US military, using amazing advances in hypersonic weaponry, satellites, cyberwarfare, drones and so on, along with their US+EU sized manufacturing sector. They capitalize on their advantage to occupy Japan, Australia, the Pacific and bring the US to its knees by blockading all its ports.
Should we say 'oh the US was completely retarded going to war over Taiwan and losing 5 million men, all its prestige, overseas territories, alliance networks'. No because this wasn't a reasonably foreseeable outcome. Nobody knew beforehand that the Chinese were so capable, only with hindsight does 'oh their manufacturing capacity is so enormous' really become obvious, since people are assuming a short war fought in a single decisive battle. Only with hindsight do we know they had backdoors in all this critical infrastructure, that they'd stolen the specifications for US weapons, that there were 5th columnists feeding them intelligence. Only with hindsight would we learn that, since there hadn't been a naval war for decades, the meta had changed decisively in ways that benefitted the Chinese and obsoleted US strategy.
Even Yamamoto knew there was no chance at all against the US in a protracted conflict.
The whole strategy was to ensure there wouldn't be an unfavourable protracted conflict, by exploiting their temporary and diminishing military superiority to secure a Pacific perimeter and win decisive battles. That Japan lost the decisive battle at Midway does not undermine the importance of decisive battles, especially considering Japan lost the war as a direct result of that battle!
Suppose there were a counterfactual where the Japanese divebombers come out of a cloud, sink 4 carriers and win the battle. The US is fucked, that's the Pacific Fleet neutered for the time being. They can keep producing but how can they keep Pearl Harbour from being bombed to shit? What good is a carrier without bases to fuel it? What good is cycling in new and untrained crews vs veterans?
If you conclude that conflict is inevitable, logically you have to go for the dice roll rather than play passively and let the US achieve total military superiority.
The US is fucked, that's the Pacific Fleet neutered for the time being. They can keep producing but how can they keep Pearl Harbour from being bombed to shit? What good is a carrier without bases to fuel it?
The difference was so crushing that USA would win anyway, as long as they would have not surrendered.
Suppose there were a counterfactual where the Japanese divebombers come out of a cloud, sink 4 carriers and win the battle. The US is fucked, that's the Pacific Fleet neutered for the time being. They can keep producing but how can they keep Pearl Harbour from being bombed to shit? What good is a carrier without bases to fuel it? What good is cycling in new and untrained crews vs veterans?
Uh, how exactly are the Japanese going to bomb Pearl Harbor after the initial strike on December 7th? Even during the attack, American sailors were actively defending the base and the ships with AA fire once the initial surprise wore off. The increasing resistance was one of the factors that made Nagumo avoid a third strike.
It is not impossible to bomb defended targets with carrier-based aircraft. See the Doolittle raids, island-hopping, the entire Pacific War, strategic bombing in general...
The Doolittle Raid was a total surprise, the Japanese were not expecting the US to launch army bombers from carriers. Secondly, the US did very little material damage in the raid.
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Notes -
How are they supposed to know their computing technology is worse than the US's? THIS IS SECRET RESEARCH!
Option A: roll the dice and see what happens, depending on a host of unknowable fog-of-war matters Option B: vacate China and Indo-China, resulting in massive rioting and the collapse of the government since the public won't be happy about admitting defeat after tens or hundreds of thousands have died in the war.
Suppose the Chinese completely obliterate the US military, using amazing advances in hypersonic weaponry, satellites, cyberwarfare, drones and so on, along with their US+EU sized manufacturing sector. They capitalize on their advantage to occupy Japan, Australia, the Pacific and bring the US to its knees by blockading all its ports.
Should we say 'oh the US was completely retarded going to war over Taiwan and losing 5 million men, all its prestige, overseas territories, alliance networks'. No because this wasn't a reasonably foreseeable outcome. Nobody knew beforehand that the Chinese were so capable, only with hindsight does 'oh their manufacturing capacity is so enormous' really become obvious, since people are assuming a short war fought in a single decisive battle. Only with hindsight do we know they had backdoors in all this critical infrastructure, that they'd stolen the specifications for US weapons, that there were 5th columnists feeding them intelligence. Only with hindsight would we learn that, since there hadn't been a naval war for decades, the meta had changed decisively in ways that benefitted the Chinese and obsoleted US strategy.
The whole strategy was to ensure there wouldn't be an unfavourable protracted conflict, by exploiting their temporary and diminishing military superiority to secure a Pacific perimeter and win decisive battles. That Japan lost the decisive battle at Midway does not undermine the importance of decisive battles, especially considering Japan lost the war as a direct result of that battle!
Suppose there were a counterfactual where the Japanese divebombers come out of a cloud, sink 4 carriers and win the battle. The US is fucked, that's the Pacific Fleet neutered for the time being. They can keep producing but how can they keep Pearl Harbour from being bombed to shit? What good is a carrier without bases to fuel it? What good is cycling in new and untrained crews vs veterans?
If you conclude that conflict is inevitable, logically you have to go for the dice roll rather than play passively and let the US achieve total military superiority.
The difference was so crushing that USA would win anyway, as long as they would have not surrendered.
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Uh, how exactly are the Japanese going to bomb Pearl Harbor after the initial strike on December 7th? Even during the attack, American sailors were actively defending the base and the ships with AA fire once the initial surprise wore off. The increasing resistance was one of the factors that made Nagumo avoid a third strike.
It is not impossible to bomb defended targets with carrier-based aircraft. See the Doolittle raids, island-hopping, the entire Pacific War, strategic bombing in general...
The Doolittle Raid was a total surprise, the Japanese were not expecting the US to launch army bombers from carriers. Secondly, the US did very little material damage in the raid.
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Not possible, unfortunately. America would not have settled for any kind of concessions Japan might throw their way after Pearl Harbor.
Still would went better than the war.
The US would have demanded Japan end its colonial empire, which was unacceptable to the Japanese.
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