>>If the U.S. had had a total disaster at Pearl Harbor, and lost every ship there, as well as all the aircraft carriers, the U.S. would still have won the war handily<<
This guy has done extensive research that supports your argument. The Japanese desperately lacked the oil and other resources to carry on the war. They were burning highly volatile unrefined Indonesian crude oil in many of their ships, causing them to explode much more readily when hit by a US torpedo (if the torpedo worked*)...
Overview of the Economic Forces In the Pacific War Subtitle: Why The Battle of Midway May Not Have Mattered.
combinedfleet.com
In other words, even if it had lost catastrophically at the Battle of Midway, the United States Navy still would have broken even with Japan in carriers and naval air power by about September 1943. Nine months later, by the middle of 1944, the U.S. Navy would have enjoyed a nearly two-to-one superiority in carrier aircraft capacity! Not only that, but with her newer, better aircraft designs, the U.S. Navy would have enjoyed not only a substantial numeric, but also a critical qualitative advantage as well, starting in late 1943. All this is not to say that losing the Battle of Midway would not have been a serious blow to American fortunes! For instance, the war would almost certainly have been protracted if the U.S. had been unable to mount some sort of a credible counter-stroke in the Solomons during the latter half of 1942. Without carrier-based air power of some sort there would not have been much hope of doing so, meaning that we would most likely have lost the Solomons. However, the long-term implications are clear: the United States could afford to make good losses that the Japanese simply could not. Furthermore, this comparison does not reflect the fact that the United States actually slowed down it's carrier building program in late 1944, as it became increasingly evident that there was less need for them. Had the U.S. lost at Midway, it seems likely that those additional carriers (3 Midway-class and 6 more Essex-Class CVs, plus the Saipan-class CVLs) would have been brought on line more quickly. In a macro-economic sense, then, the Battle of Midway was really a non-event. There was no need for the U.S. to seek a single, decisive battle which would 'Doom Japan' -- Japan was doomed by it's very decision to make war.
Invasion: Pearl Harbor! Debunking the Japanese invasion of Hawaii.
combinedfleet.com
Big Reason #2 is that the Japanese, even at the zenith of their military power, never had anywhere near the logistical capability or the amphibious expertise to transport 60,000 troops to a remote landing site, land them under enemy fire, provide them with sustained gunfire and air support, and keep them supported throughout what could easily be a month-long campaign. The invasion of Malaya, which was the single largest Japanese amphibious operation of the war, had involved a scant three divisions, and they hadn't been landed all at once, nor had they been landed into the teeth of concerted enemy fire. Furthermore, the Japanese invasion convoys in that campaign had been operating from bases in French Indochina (Vietnam), which were a few hundred miles from the Malayan beaches. British airpower was dispersed, and unable to concentrate against the Japanese landings. By contrast, Hawaii is some 3,900 miles from Japan, and almost 2,300 miles from Truk, which were the only staging areas developed enough for such an undertaking.
Oil and Japanese Strategy in the Solomons: A Postulate An examination of the logistical difficulties Japan faced in the Solomons campaign.
combinedfleet.com
Furthermore, by this time (October-November 1942) it must have been begining to become clear to the Japanese that the oilfields in Java and Sumatra were not going to be brought back into production at nearly the rate that pre-war estimates had counted on. The Dutch and their Allies had done a much more thorough job of demolition in the oilfields than the Japanese had hoped. This, coupled with the sinking of a transport filled with equipment and valuable refinery personnel, meant that Japanese efforts to get the production field back into production were doomed to be much slower than hoped by the Japanese military. The fact that the Imperial Navy had built up large stocks of petroleum before the was could not compensate for this sobering knowledge, especially given the high rate of fuel consumption thus far in the war. The week-long Battle of Midway alone had consumed more fuel than the Japanese Navy had ever used before in an entire year of peacetime operations (Willmott, "The Barrier and the Javelin"). With this in mind, let us examine what it took to fight effectively around Guadalcanal.
*The US fought half the war with faulty torpedo detonators. It was a classic bureacratic FUBAR by the Burea of Naval Ordnance. |
