Why Japan was so easily beaten at Leyte gulf?

sinking 4 escort carriers at the cost of multiple heavy cruisers and possibly even a battleship? Kurita made the right decision to pull out.

Pearl Harbour would have been a success if the carriers had been there

Bringing battleships to a carrier fight

Any "sunk" carriers would've been raised and underway within months, if not earlier.

>Pearl Harbour would have been a success if

The Japanese had occupied Hawaii

With what exactly?

Japan had less marines capable of amphibious operations than the Hawaii garrison.

I don't have to tell you how awful of an idea it is to attempt an amphibious invasion with even numbers to the defenders.

>carriers
Escort carriers, not carriers. It was not worth chasing them while hundreds of aircraft are making sorties your way, risking losing very valuable vessels.

It's a totally possible and feasible idea but the logistics of ferrying divisions of men across the pacific to attack was difficult.

This is completely wrong

the aircraft the US had at Samar were equipped to support a landing, not to destroy warships, they were largely ineffective at anything other than ensuring air superiority

>It's a totally possible and feasible idea
no it isn't, Hawaii had hundreds of aircraft ready to go, and more would have been brought in every single day

what troops are the japanese going to use for this invasion?

A few SNLF detachments and two infantry divisions? not exactly hard to squeeze out of China or Manchuria or raise anew from mainland
>hundreds of aircraft
The Kido Butai had hundreds too, better ones, piloted by better pilots. If Japan wanted a good invasion of Hawaii they would do it simultaneously with the airstrike or in the second day. Don't underestimate Japanese invasion capabilities, they kekd 150,000 Americans with 50,000 troops at the Philippines and did similar things to the british.

shore based aviation is always superior to carrier based

Based on what

Faster turnover and rearming, can carry more munitions, immune to submarine attacks (Pearl Harbor has lots of those)

no
they missed the chance to bomb the sub pens,oil refinery and the deciphering station that the Americans had which would be a bigger blow than those dumb battlebitches

the Japs had to abandon some destroyers just to have enough fuel to make it there
there was no way they could properly supply anything more than a token raiding force

The Japanese had been under regular air attack for the past 3 days or so. Kurita and his captains were sleep deprived as fuck. They thought they were fighting CA's and DD's not DD's and DE's, a misconception reinforced by the torpedo charge those ships pulled.

I hate to support the weebs on this one, but in this case the IJN actually did have the advantage in terms of airpower.
ww2pacific.com/aaf41.html

I'll exclude non-modern types for brevity.

USAAF - total of 223 aircraft:
>12 B-17D
>13 A-20A
>41 P-36
>99 P-40

USMC at Hawaii:
>11 F4F-3
>8 SB2U-3
>23 SBD
at Midway
>18 SB2U
at Wake
>12 F4F-3

USN
>71 PBY
>8 F2A
>10 F4F
>3 SBD-2

Of those, the USAAF lost 64 aircraft in the initial attack and 82 damaged, with only 77 still combat ready once the dust settled. Of those, there were 4 B-17s, 5 A-20s, 27 P-40s, and 16 P-36s.

That's against nearly 400 modern IJN aircraft:
>108 A6M2
>144 B5N
>135 D3A

Assuming the air campaign had continued, the IJN had clear superiority - US fighters were outnumbered and, in the case of the P-36s, outgunned. The modest strike component available to the US was next to useless - anti-ship doctrine for medium and heavy bombers hadn't really been developed yet, although the A-20s may have had some success, and the dive bombers would struggle to get sufficient fighter escort.

That's ignoring the logistical impossibility of a land invasion of Hawaii though. It was already stretching IJN logistics to the very limit just to do the single strike on Pearl Harbor, let alone a sustained campaign.

>faster turnover and rearming
Pearl Harbor had only two airfields, they could be easily destroyed
>more munition
lol?
>Immune to submarine attacks
And extremely vulnerable to air-attacks, bomb the runways and make an airfield effectively useless

not how it works, you can disable a runway for a short time but creating a makeshift one doesnt take long

see eastern front

I'm saying a land based aircraft can carry a heavier load than a carrier based aircraft, carriers can only launch one wave of medium bombers at best in the 40's and the only time it happened was Doolittle

Are you literally arguing that carrier-based air is superior to land-based air?

Speaking for pearl harbor, yes. The Japanese aircraft employed were superior to everything the US had on Pearl Harbor. Generally speaking the loads of both aircraft were similar with the exception of large twin/four engine bombers that were stationed in Pearl Harbor which couldn't really give an answer to an airstrike from carriers (They would easily be intercepted and if not they are horribly inaccurate)

>The Japanese aircraft employed were superior to everything the US had on Pearl Harbor.
What the fuck are you talking about. P-40 was faster, dived better, had better protection, and much better armament.

>(They would easily be intercepted and if not they are horribly inaccurate)
They were inaccurate but hardly easy to intercept. B-17s especially were essentially invulnerable to carrier air.

>P-40
had something like a 1:40 KDA against Zeroes, got shot down routinely even by older A5M's, it was completely inferior and was phased out by the USAAF as fast as possible as the war started. 'protection' in the aircraft was only limited to pilot canopy reinforcement (bullets will still tear through it) and self-sealing fuel tanks. There was no big disparity in protection between either aircraft

>hardly easy to intercept and invulnerable to carrier air
Dumb statement that destroys your credibility. If B-17's try to attack moving shipping they will have to remain within altitude where they will be easily intercepted by carrier CAS. If they 'try to be invulnerable' and fly to extremely high altitude they will never find their targets.

>had something like a 1:40 KDA against Zeroes,
Not true at all.

>got shot down routinely even by older A5M's, it was completely inferior and
Please tell me you are merely pretending to be retarded.

>was phased out by the USAAF as fast as possible as the war started.
P-40 production continued to 1944 and there were thousands more P-40s built than A6M2s.

...

>not true at all
Can you dispute with a credible source?

>Please tell me you are xxxx
No I'm not, even fixed landing gear KI-27 was a threat to P-40's that were piloted by dumbasses who tried to dogfight.
>produced into 1944
To be leased to allied airforces.

>Dumb statement that destroys your credibility. If B-17's try to attack moving shipping they will have to remain within altitude where they will be easily intercepted by carrier CAS
Except that's not what happened in real, actual history. B-17s could and more importantly actually did loiter and attack at will from altitude, pretty much immune from Jap fighters, such as at Midway.
Why are you even on a history board if you never read history?

>Can you dispute with a credible source?
Can you prove your claim with a credible source?
Meanwhile you've proven yourself to be a retarded source.

>To be leased to allied airforces.
USAAF used P-40 throughout the war in both fronts.

And they did literally nothing and hit nothing.

Lucky for them since they bombed USN shipping at the coral sea but didn't hit shit

So you've gone from "they are easily intercepted" to "they did literally nothung lmao."

They are still theoratically easly intercepted, I'm highlighting how they either climb, hit nothing, or descend and still hit nothing and get intercepted/hit by AA

>During the first week of October, Tactical flew around 2,600 sorties for the Fifth and Eighth Armies. On the 1st and 2d, 160 U.S. P-40's paved the way for an Eighth Army landing at Termoli on the Adriatic by bombing and strafing troops and vehicles on roads north and west of the town. On the day of the landing (3 October) and the day after, despite bad weather, fighter-bombers with some help from B-25's inflicted severe punishment on enemy traffic. Fighters and fighter-bombers then went all-out to help the Eighth hold the bridgehead against a series of hard German counterattacks. On the two most critical days, the 5th and 6th, Spitfires and P-40's of the RAF and the U.S. 57th and 79th Fighter Groups flew approximately 950 sorties over the battle area. They broke up the main enemy concentration, struck hard against road movement, especially around Isernia, flew direct-support missions over the battle line, and protected the ground troops against a few Luftwaffe raids. Without their efforts it is doubtful that the bridgehead could have been saved. After the crisis had passed, P-40's bombed the German escape route through Palata.
From the Air Force's official history of WW2 operations.

>On the night of 12/13 October the Fifth Army attacked along its entire front in an effort to cross the Volturno12 The crossing would be accomplished by the 15th with but little aid from NAAF's planes, which were almost entirely grounded by the weather. The 13th was NAAF's best day, and then only 250 sorties were flown, half of them by P-40's.

In the first half of Nov 1943
>Along the western half of the front from the 1st through the 15th, Tactical steadily attacked gun positions, road and rail bridges, vehicles, and bivouac areas along and close to the battle line.2 These operations were handled by fighters and fighter-bombers, with some help from B-25's in the first week, U. S. P-40's flew 500 sorties and U. S. and RAF Spitfires 700.

Supporting Monte Camino
>In the Fifth Army area, on the 8th and 9th, over 400 P-40 and A-36 sorties and 60 A-20 sorties were flown against communications, troop concentrations, gun positions, and bivouac areas.

Rabaul, 1943
>On 31 December, patrolling P-47's and P-40's shot down eight Vals and four fighters, claiming two additional probables off Cape Gloucester. Between 15 and 31 December, over Arawe and Gloucester the Japanese lost an estimated 163 destroyed and 22 probables--a loss they could ill afford when their own base at Rabaul was being hard hit by South Pacific air forces. So succeeding raids were made usually at night in small strength, and Allied air action became that mainly of ground support and aerial supply.

Attack on Arawe
>Actually, Japanese resistance to the Allied landing was "pitiable." For more than eight hours, no enemy aircraft appeared, by which time all landing craft had unloaded their cargoes and were heading back toward Oro Bay. The first raid came shortly after 1600, by nine Helen bombers escorted by perhaps twenty Zeke and Tony fighters. The enemy pilots were not particularly enthusiastic, and when twelve P-40's approached, several of the bombers jettisoned their bombs and with some of the fighters beat a hasty retreat. A number of bombs were dropped, however, and one American enlisted man was killed and another wounded. In the combat that had meanwhile developed overhead, one P-40 was seen to go down in flames, and two Helens and three enemy fighters were destroyed.124

Should've mentioned the Flying Tigers tbqh fąm. Had a 21:1 K/D with their P-40s.

They were before the war started, not couple years after when the P-40 was supposedly phased out by the USAAF. See

>was phased out by the USAAF as fast as possible as the war started

Perhaps it's just Wikipedia being wrong, but wiki shows the 1st AVG was active from the 21st of December, 1941, 14 days after the bombing of pearl harbour.

>American pilot air claims
>Credible
Pick one and only one. They were the biggest over-claiming airforce of WW2 after the luftwaffe.

Can I get a source on that? Sounds interesting. My victory count stems from this book.

Flying guns is a good book highlighting American over-claiming and exaggerations
You will find tons of mini anecdotes also from Midway, Coral sea, and Truuk of Ameircan aerial claims that conflict with Japanese records

Cheers for the information. I rechecked my original source, somehow I entirely ignored this part, so this is completely a mistake on my side:
> But these are only claims. Fighter pilots of all nations, in all theaters of World War II, overstated their victories for a variety of very good reasons, and the overclaiming was most egregious in the circumstances in which the AVG did much of its fighting: over water, rain forest, or enemy-held territory, and in furballs with enemy aircraft greatly outnumbering the defenders

And as a Boyington fanatic it's kind of silly of me to ask for a source on overstating victory claims since Pappy himself overstated his victory count when he flew for the Flying Tigers.
Another interesting this is how much U.S pilots were paid for shooting down an enemy, so I believe this was a huge reason for overstating claims, since the award was fucking huge:
>AVG pilots were paid $500 for each Japanese plane destroyed—the rough equivalant of $10,000 today. Unlike the practice in most air forces, aircraft destroyed on the ground were given the same weight as those claimed in air-to-air combat

Just for my autism decided to check how much this would be regards to income. For shooting down a single plane was basically the equivalent of getting someone's average salary, fucking insane.

Maybe this is a stupid question but would pilots be paid out right after they confirmed a kill with command or would pat be saved up until they rotated back home? I would imagine that during wartime, the military wouldn't really be paying equivalents of millions of dollars today just for a few unconfirmed air kills.

My country has a saying "There are no stupid questions, only stupid answers".
Upon further inspection it appears it was the Chinese government that was paying the Flying Tigers $500 per victory
>The Chinese government paid the pilots $500 for each enemy aircraft destroyed,
>Later, after the recruiters’ promises were confirmed by Madame Chiang, they still didn’t have hundreds of dollars on hand. [...] but nobody received a combat bonus before April, which rules out Everard’s “sale” at Magwe. And even after that date, the payouts weren’t handled by Pappy Paxton, the AVG paymaster, but by the CAMCO office in New York City, which deposited the money directly into a pilot’s bank account
In other words the money was given later to the pilots by the Chinese, and then deposited by the CAMCO office
So the $500 bonus was only for the Flying Tiger pilots, I might look up on whether or not other U.S pilots received such massive bonuses.

CAMCO stands for "Central Aircraft Manufacturing Company" just for clarification

Kurita could've single handedly destroyed all of Taffy 3, the entire 3rd fleet, and every single US ship at Leyte and it still wouldn't have made a single difference because his country was completely starved for resources and basically unable to push any advantage they could've had. All the Americans needed was to just wait it out. Why is it that people never seem to grasp how bad the situation was for the japanese and just act as if the pacific was was won against an overwhelmingly superior enemy?

>Vietnam succeeded where they didn't 2 decades later
The only reason why the Vietnam war wasn't won within a month was because the US army wasn't allowed to actually invade North Vietnam, because of fear that China would do what they did in Korea. That meant that the only people in the world who could end the war were the Communist leaders. If they stayed stubborn, the war would end once the US lost patience and said "fuck it, then have the country, I don't care enough to keep this up". Which is exactly what happened.

It was in no way comparable to the situation of Japan in WW II. Pearl Harbor ensued that this war would be fought to the bitter end. A sneak attack on US soil was unforgivable in that time's testosterone heavy culture.

>flying guns
love this book
>Americans attack german column with ground-attack aircraft
>claim to destroy 500-1000 vehicles
>research shows only 14 were destroyed and numerous other soft vehicles received damages

>B-17's
>Getting hit by AA

In his memoir, Capt. Tameichi Hara repeated describes AA guns as being nearly useless against B-17's. They flew high enough that they were beyond the range of most guns, and they were sturdy enough to shrug off whatever could hit them. They wrecked havoc on Japanese shipping throughout the war.