Was Pearl Harbour a tactical success?

Was Pearl Harbour a tactical success?

How are you defining "tactical success"? Did they destroy more than they lose? Sure. Did they accomplish the stated objective of leaving the USN Pacific fleet too weak to be unable to intervene in attacks on places like the DEI and Phillipines? Sure. (Although they probably would have been too weak anyway, it's not like those obsolete battleships were going to be riding the rescue) Is it accurately matching up their assets on scene to valuable objectives? If you go by that, not really.

>tactical

Obviously.

>strategic

Fuck no. It was an absolute catastrophe. With Pearl Harbour Japanese defeat was assured. The U.S wasn't going to immediately come to terms as they had hoped, instead it would bring the full might of its absurd industrial machine against bumfuck Japan and bring them to their knees.

Arguable.

The Japs ignored many strategically important targets like command centers, fuel storage and processing facilities, submarine bases, naval repair yards, power stations, ammo magazines, etc. Also, none of the three USN fleet carriers were present at Pearl Harbor, which were high priority targets for two major attack groups in both the first and second waves. Sinking these carriers was critically important for the Japanese to have control in the Pacific.

Their biggest success was damaging or destroying eight battleships. Despite this achievement, the USN was able to raise and/or repair six and return them to service. Aside from the battleships, three destroyers and three cruisers were damaged in the attack, and all six were repaired and returned to service. The three other auxiliary ships hit (minelayer, repair ship, seaplane tender) were also put back into action.

So 13 of the 16 ships hit by the Japanese were repaired and returned to service. Submarine pens, fuel depots, oil refineries, power stations, shipyards, etc. all survived unscathed as well as all three fleet carriers.

And do you really think that the U.S. wouldn't be able to repair sub pens, naval repair yards, power stations, etc.?

Its not a matter of repairing, its a matter of taking them.
If Pearl was a strategic victory, it would end with no bombing, land victory, and then repainting all captured ships.
But you would still need a way to invade until you get to the coast, and deny them ability to field a sea army.

>Its not a matter of repairing, its a matter of taking them.
Are you retarded?
>If Pearl was a strategic victory, it would end with no bombing, land victory, and then repainting all captured ships.
Holy shit you are retarded.
>But you would still need a way to invade until you get to the coast, and deny them ability to field a sea army.
Please kill yourself.

There is 0 possibility of an actual invasion of the Hawaiian islands. For starters, they didn't take an invasion fleet with them, just raided with carriers. Even if they did, Pearl Harbor is close to four THOUSAND kilometers from their closest base in the Marshalls, and even that isn't that well developed. Go look up the initial wave of actual Japanese invasions. It took months to subdue places like the Phillipines, and it would take months (assuming they achieved total surprise and actually landed in order) to try to take Hawaii. Meanwhile, they're at the mercy of any damn cruiser slipping anywhere between their target and the Marshalls, and as powerful as the IJN is in early 1942, they can't cover all of that, and especially not while they do other things they need to. You also almost certainly won't capture the ships in harbor. Something like the Toulon operation was over in hours, and the French still managed to scuttle their ships. It would take weeks to months to take Oahu, and you really don't think the U.S. would either sail their ships out, or just blow them up?

And even if you somehow make that impossibility work, you'll never actually stop U.S. ship construction (it's called a navy, not a "sea army"), because most of that is on the east coast.

Whether it was a tactical success is debatable. They destroyed or at least damaged more materiel than they lost, albeit little more than some obsolete battleships (mostly salvageable too). Either way, it was as much of a strategic success as Midway or Leyte gulf, if not worse.

No, I don't think that, because it's a stupid thing to say. Obviously it was in their capability to repair those facilities. Pearl Harbor was the headquarters for the USN Pacific Fleet. By neglecting these targets the base remained functional and allowed faster recovery following the attack. Had they destroyed these targets, the US would have been denied an important in-theater base to repair, rearm, and refuel naval vessels.

Pearl Harbor was also used as an important staging area for amphibious operations which depended on these facilities for servicing. Had they been knocked out, ships would be forced to go elsewhere until the base was functional again.

You might be able to repair your bike in a crash during a race, but in the meantime you lose ground every second until your bike is back in action.

Except the U.S. wasn't taking to the offensive for some time anyway. And their CBs were often able to construct entirely new ports and bases from scratch on coral atolls in weeks. Repairing an already existing base after it was buzzed by a few hundred CVP isn't going to slow them down by any appreciable measure.

>Except the U.S. wasn't taking to the offensive for some time anyway
They were on the offensive barely six months later. The Battle of the Coral Sea and Battle of Midway also heavily depended on the base's logistical support.

Station HYPO, one of the US codebreaking groups, was located at Pearl Harbor. Two months after the attack, it heavily contributed to the breaking of Japan's JN-25 cipher in Feb 1942, and then the JN-25b three months later in May. HYPO's interception IJN communications is what allowed us to curbstomp them in the ambush at the Battle of Midway.

>And their CBs were often able to construct entirely new ports and bases from scratch on coral atolls in weeks.

They made makeshift bases used temporarily during the island hopping campaign. These rushed efforts weren't comparable at all to facilities at Pearl Harbor. Its drydock took 10 years to build during peacetime and could handle fleet carriers and battleships. But you're saying CBs could do it in weeks during war on some atoll? By late 1942, USN submarines crippled the Japanese economy and cut their raw material imports in half, and halted oil imports. Subs depended on Pearl Harbor not only for resupply and servicing, but for HYPO's signal intelligence to track IJN fleet movements.

The Japanese neglecting infrastructure at Pearl Harbor is what allowed HYPO to continue working uninterrupted. You're trying to tell me that destruction of the headquarters building where HYPO operated wouldn't have affected their code breaking efforts two months later?

No. they missed the aircraft carriers

If by tactical success you mean a one way ticket to nuclear shelling i say yes

>The Japanese neglecting infrastructure at Pearl Harbor is what allowed HYPO to continue working uninterrupted. You're trying to tell me that destruction of the headquarters building where HYPO operated wouldn't have affected their code breaking efforts two months later?
No, I am not, but that's a nice strawman you have there. What I'm saying is that the attack by a couple hundred CVP would not keep Pearl Harbor out of commission for any significant length of time. If they were lucky, the damage would last weeks, if not, only a couple of days. Go look up the strategic bombing campaigns in Europe, where you'd have bases struck by hundreds of 4 engine bombers, each of which was carrying about 6-8 times the bomb load of a Val or a Kate, and these raids would be repeated over the course of months and not be some surprise attack followed by flight. It was colossally rare to put a port out of action, or to cripple any critical facility, because you know, people would come along and FIX them, often very quickly; betting on a Pearl Harbor attack to do actual damage to things that aren't very vulnerable to torpedos is a bad one.

lols

>At least we got those few obsolete battleships out of the way!

You clearly don't know what a strawman is. You literally said that damaging infrastructure wouldn't matter that much because things can be fixed. No one is disputing that destroyed buildings can't be repaired. The point is that even though it may take just a few weeks to fix them, these vital facilities would remain inoperable until then.

Station HYPO contributed to the breakthrough in decrypting Japanese ciphers used by the IJN. The Battle of Midway was the turning point in the Pacific Theater, and even considered to be one of the most decisive defeats in the entire history of naval warfare. Station HYPO at Pearl Harbor greatly contributed to the breaking of the JN-25b code that gave us critical information allowing us to win the battle. Had HYPO been delayed even a few weeks, it would have prolonged the cracking of JN-25 in February 1942 and thus the later JN-25b in time for Midway.

The Japs intended Midway to be a major defeat and cripple the USN's ability to go on the offensive, which could very well have happened had we not decrypted their communications and set up an ambush. You're delusional if you honestly believe attacking infrastructure at Pearl Harbor wouldn't have had a sizable impact.

obviously

>You clearly don't know what a strawman is.
Yes, I do. I stated that attacking port and in this case intelligence infrastructure is a bad idea because it could be repaired very quickly. You then burst out with "You're trying to tell me that destruction of the headquarters building where HYPO operated wouldn't have affected their code breaking efforts two months later?", which has implicit that I thought the HQ WOULD be destroyed, and that any such damage would still be affecting them 2 months later, which I never stated and you never really proved.

>The point is that even though it may take just a few weeks to fix them, these vital facilities would remain inoperable until then.
How do you know that? What makes a codebreaking HQ impossible to keep operable for weeks but power plants that have been bombed much more heavily were up and running within days?


>You're delusional if you honestly believe attacking infrastructure at Pearl Harbor wouldn't have had a sizable impact.
Considering that your supporting argument had no less than 4 conditional statements, to it, you're kind of reaching for a sizeable impact? What if the strike on the HYPO facilities simply fails, doing no appreciable damage? What if they break the code on a tighter schedule? What if, with station HYPO being temporarily knocked out, other codebreaking groups based in the U.S. do the analysis work? What if the battle is won without the breaking of the codes, or simply never develops, instead of "CRIPPLE THE USN'S ABILITY TO GO ON THE OFFENSIVE" (What offensives did the USN go on in late 42 anyway?)

Trying to use tiny, carrier based torpedo bombers as strategic bombers is really, really dumb.

Was invading and occupying Hawaii possible?

no and it was never proposed because it would have beenn idiotic. The objective of the attack was to cripple the US navy to such a degree that Japan would have free reign in the Pacific to take what they needed and fortify themselves, hoping to ultimately force America into a negotiated peace where they keep everything they had their hands on.

During the battle of the Coral Sea the USS Yorktown was damaged. It had less than a month to be repaired before heading to Midway. If the repair infrastructure of Pearl Harbor was compromised than it could of had a bigger impact on that battle. Though that was 5 months after Pearl Harbor so there still would of been time to get the facilities up and running. Also the Japanese probably had dive bombers which can fuck land targets up pretty well. At least the oil tanks on Pearl should of been attacked and that was planned in a third wave by the Japanese but canceled in fear of a counter attack at the time.
>What offensives did the USN go on in late 42 anyway?
How about the entire Guadalcanal campaign ya donut.

That doesn't sound much better to be honest. Did the Japanese just not realize the manufacturing capabilities of the USA? How did they possibly expect to come out on top?

what do you think would have happened if they hit the fuel storage, sank the carriers and destroyed the repair yards, or any of those three? what position does that leave them in?

They thought the Americans were weak-willed and unwilling to stand a war. After belting out some decisive defeats the Americans would sue for peace. Unfortunately, because of the circumstances of the Japaneses cutting diplomatic ties after the attack on Pearl Harbor it could be presented to the American people as a sneak attack and unite them together.
Pretty interesting because Admiral Yammato who designed the attack studied in America and basically knew everything that would happen after the attack but still had to go through with it because of his position.

>Was Pearl Harbour a tactical success?

Check damage caused vs loss of 29 aircraft and crew.

It would have utterly crippled the USN in the Pacific. The fleet carriers were the most strategically important ships in the navy. Losing them along with Pearl Harbor's shipyards and infrastructure would have taken us out of offensive warfare for quite a while, allowing the Japs to spread further better fortify positions in captured territory.

>I stated that attacking port and in this case intelligence infrastructure is a bad idea because it could be repaired very quickly.

Really? Repairing things like the shipyards and drydock that took ten years to construct could be easily fixed "very quickly" after a sustained air attack by dozens of bombers? I guess repairing detonated ammo magazines and fuel storage tanks is no problem for some CBs to handle in a couple weeks time without electricity and running water.

>What makes a codebreaking HQ impossible to keep operable for weeks but power plants that have been bombed much more heavily were up and running within days?

Because those power stations could be repaired onsite by military engineers without proprietary skills and tools. Cryptography stations like HYPO used sophisticated analog computers made by IBM that used special tabulating punched cards. You may be able to change a flat tire on your car on the side of the road, but replacing the transmission requires special skills and tools for the job.

>What if, with station HYPO being temporarily knocked out, other codebreaking groups based in the U.S. do the analysis work?
They couldn't, because HYPO was the only station in the area that could intercept IJN signal traffic. This is the station that caught Japanese communications concerning the Battle of Midway. The next closest one was FRUMEL in Australia used by the Commonwealth, which was too far south.

>What offensives did the USN go on in late 42 anyway?
The Aleutian Islands Campaign for one. Guadalcanal the largest in 1942, which was only possible because the IJN defeat at Midway a month earlier halted their advance, preventing them from assisting forces surrounded by the USN. The defeat at Guadalcanal cemented the war's turning point even further after Midway.