The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor

Sort of ignores the huge shift in naval warfare though, Jutland was the last time battleships really squared off against each other and it was indecisive as fuck

Taking Hawaii wouldn't win the war against the U.S., and sending the cream of your marines on a hopeless suicide run like that is not a particularly good idea, especially since you need to do other amphibious invasions at around the same time.

I know the Japanese were "at their limit", but it was the limit for a bombing mission. Without carriers (or just one) they would have had enough fuel for few troop ships, and Hawaii was not a fortress at all.
Well, it's not my point, I just say it was as stupid as sucker punching a big boy and then just take a seat waiting for what could happen.

And a decisive carrier battle in Midway determined when the war was lost. Without a real carrier fleet, Japan was not able to take Port Moresby and isolate Australia, which may have been their last chance.

Wouldn't the Americans be absolutely fucked if they lost Hawaii? Where are they going to stage attacks from, Alaska? The Japanese surely should have tried to take the islands.

>Taking Hawaii wouldn't win the war against the U.S
Taking Hawaii means pig America has to conduct naval landings across the entire Pacific, rather than by island hopping.
Or they have to go around the world the other way and tagteam with the Brits from the Indian Ocean, which is just not worth the trouble. At that point, it's not unlikely that the US would just let Japan have its co-prospherity sphere.

>it was indecisive as fuck
Jutland doomed Germany to starvation.

AVGN: They weren't thinking. What a shit load of motherfucking bullfuck.

Germany was doomed anyway, the Hochseeflotte was no match for what the RN could throw at them even if they won at Jutland

Yeah but not if they btfo the RN tsushima-style.

>Taking Hawaii means pig America has to conduct naval landings across the entire Pacific, rather than by island hopping.
No it doesn't you retard. It just means they start from a different point, like Pago Pago, Brisbane, or setup shop in Calcutta.

>Or they have to go around the world the other way and tagteam with the Brits from the Indian Ocean, which is just not worth the trouble
Why exactly is it "not worth the trouble"? It would take longer to ship in men and supplies, but it's not like the British weren't building up millions of troops in the region with just their own resources, you have more of a transportation infrastructure, and you're much closer to the vital oil pipeline.

>At that point, it's not unlikely that the US would just let Japan have its co-prospherity sphere.
It is completely unlikely, the U.S. was out for blood.

See above.

No it didn't. Midway did nothing except to announce the trend. It would be another year and a half before the Americans were capable of taking decisive action in the Pacific, invading and holding Japanese held islands from the shore. Not to say it wasn't important, but its reputation as war winning is colossally exaggerated.

>Without a real carrier fleet, Japan was not able to take Port Moresby and isolate Australia, which may have been their last chance.
And so what if they do? In a couple of months, you have the Essex class carriers online, the CV advantage swings to the Americans in any event, and they break your blockade.

Mahan's main idea isn't that you have to try to get a decisive battle, but that focusing on a commerce raiding navy is retarded because the side with the bigger actual navy controls the seas and wins anyway.

Not him, but even if they "BTFO the RN tsushima style", because the HSF couldn't actually keep in fighting trim outside of the North Sea, as they were designed with way less practical range than the British vessels. They'd need to somehow manage to set up regular patrols all throughout the North Atlantic to get goods coming in.

That wasn't a possibility

The military, and the Japanese in particular, are slow to change. The Battle of Tsushima had a mythical status in the Japanese Navy and many of its commanders fought in Tsushima. It had been clear for a while that Battleships were going the way of the Dodo, but both the Americans and Japanese continued developing and building them. The Americans ordered 5 Montanas and 6 Alaskas in 1940 and Yamamoto received death threats when he tried to push for more carriers to be built.

Japan was losing tons of oil thanks to US embargo. You underestimate how desperate they were getting.

Also what encouraged them to try it out was the recent British attack on Taranto. Pearl Harbor is almost a literal copy of Taranto.

>It just means they start from a different point, like Pago Pago, Brisbane, or setup shop in Calcutta.
Or a completely isolated Australia capitulates. Even if it doesn't, it would be retarded as fuck to try to supply a forward base without Hawaii.
And smaller island bases further west of Hawaii don't exist without Hawaii.

>Why exactly is it "not worth the trouble"? It would take longer to ship in men and supplies, but it's not like the British weren't building up millions of troops in the region with just their own resources, you have more of a transportation infrastructure, and you're much closer to the vital oil pipeline.
Uh, there was another, more important war being fought. it's called WW2 (the real one). You are not going to fuck around with trying to wage war 3/4th of the world away just to save some Dutch colonies.

They're fucked if they didn't

and potentially fucked if they did do it.

So they had no choice.

>Or a completely isolated Australia capitulates.
Based on what?

>. Even if it doesn't, it would be retarded as fuck to try to supply a forward base without Hawaii.
Why? Supplies that were historically ran to Brisbane didn't go through Hawaii.

>And smaller island bases further west of Hawaii don't exist without Hawaii.
Pago Pago existed before Pearl Harbor, retard.

>Uh, there was another, more important war being fought. it's called WW2 (the real one). You are not going to fuck around with trying to wage war 3/4th of the world away just to save some Dutch colonies.
And yet, the Americans did that anyway, and despite "Europe First", by the end of 1943, the deployment of forces on either theater was about even, and it was enormously more expensive to project troops in the Pacific than in places like North Africa, or Britain.

Matloff, Maurice, Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare: 1943–1944, Vol. 1, Part 4, The U.S. Army in World War II Washington: GPO, 1955, p. 398

The invasion (that you yourself admit has almost no chance of working, which isn't that different from my position that it had 0 chance of working), of Hawaii won't change that.

Japan was really in a catch 22 situation when it came to their empire and routes of expansion. The continuation of their war against China led to an oil and scrap iron embargo by the West, where the grand majority of both resources came from the US.

Without any of their territory being particularly rich in iron or oil, they were faced with few options, either to call off the war with China and permanently tarnish their image as beholden to the West, or double down and continue the war for expansion and prestige.

Japan's goal with the embargo in effect was to seize resource rich provinces and render the embargoes moot by taking the oil for themselves, which had 2 options:

1. Advance north and take Soviet mines and oil fields in Siberia, which invites a war with the Red Army for it (codenamed Hokushin-Ron) or;

2. Advance south to the Dutch East Indies and French Indochina, taking oil and iron from there, but this will certainly invite war with the US who has market interests in the european colonies (code named Nanshin-Ron).

The Japanese first attempted the Northern plan and fought the Soviet Union for the Manchurian border and Mongolia, and were promptly defeated at Khalkhin Gol. Japan didn't have the land army to fight both China and the Soviets, so Japan defaulted to option 2.

Japan knew that fighting the US Pacific fleet at full strength as a fool's errand, so Pearl Harbor was planned as a way to remove the fleet entirely, and expand without the fear of US forces in the area, and at a best case scenario, intimidate the US into backing down in the Pacific. It was a tremendous gamble, but didn't pay off. The pacific fleet was damaged and Japan was free to expand for about a year, but once the US rebuilt its strength, the Pacific War turned against them quickly.

>destroy the fleet when it arrives in less than ideal conditions

the fuck did they think we were? the russians?

The American Navy in 42 and 43 had many flaws. If the Americans did decide to mass their fleet and send it all the way across the Pacific, they would've arrived in bad shape. Why do you think they decided to island hop all the way to Japan?

because it extended the range of the airforce while ignoring tactically useless targets with nothing but surely japs sitting on them

are you daft

Didn't many admirals warn against the attack? Think I read somewhere that their best guy whose name I forgot realized the impossibility after getting educated in america. Well fascist government leadership were always dreamers with visions, not realists looking at facts.

So what would have happened if the Japanese decided Pearl Harbor wasn't worth it, focused on attacking the Dutch East Indies instead, and let the Americans come after them? How would the course of the war change if America's public opinion was influenced by sending their young men to die over some European colonies?

>Based on what?
Are you genuinely incapable of figuring this out on your own?

>Why? Supplies that were historically ran to Brisbane didn't go through Hawaii.
Because fucking convoys will get fucking destroyed in the 6000 mile trip to Australia, you mouthbreathing inbred moron.

>Pago Pago existed before Pearl Harbor, retard.
Are you retarded? Do you think I'm literally saying that Pago Pago the island wouldn't come into existence without Pearl Harbor?

>And yet, the Americans did that anyway, and despite "Europe First", by the end of 1943, the deployment of forces on either theater was about even, and it was enormously more expensive to project troops in the Pacific than in places like North Africa, or Britain.
Yeah Americans did that, in a timeline where they didn't have to fight a war against Japan by going around the horn of Africa.

>The invasion (that you yourself admit has almost no chance of working, which isn't that different from my position that it had 0 chance of working), of Hawaii won't change that.
You dense motherfucker.

They should have attacked the USSR instead to help out Germany.

Japan wasn't fascist, just very militaristic
>Fight and die for miles of frozen tundra with little no reward
Yeah, great idea, unless they get west of Lake Baikal (they wouldn't) it's a waste of time for them

>Are you genuinely incapable of figuring this out on your own?
No, I'm saying that Australia is not likely to capitulate because the Japanese are running around in the Coral Sea, and you're stupid if you think that they would.

>Because fucking convoys will get fucking destroyed in the 6000 mile trip to Australia, you mouthbreathing inbred moron.
No, they won't, because Japan doesn't have the operational range, the spare fuel, the doctrine, or the ships to go searching all over the fucking pacific to intercept convoys running far away form their co-prosperity sphere.

>Are you retarded? Do you think I'm literally saying that Pago Pago the island wouldn't come into existence without Pearl Harbor?
You said
>nd smaller island bases further west of Hawaii don't exist without Hawaii.
Pago Pago is west of Hawaii. What the fuck DID you mean by it then?

>Yeah Americans did that, in a timeline where they didn't have to fight a war against Japan by going around the horn of Africa.
Demonstrate how much more expensive and inferior it is to go around the Horn of Africa than it is to go over the Pacific? I mean, after all, most of their ships and supplies were being produced on the Atlantic anyway, which necessitates going al lthe way down the east coast, through the Panama Canal, and across instead of straight over the West Coast. You don't lose that much distance.

>You dense motherfucker.
Pot, meet kettle.

The reward is winning the war, rather than losing it by poking the America bear.

They don't get any oil dickhead, the entire thing they started the war over

>Attack the USSR
>Seize Vladivostok
>Grind down trying to fight a second large land war while you've already got China to handle
>Run out of oil, since you're not invading the DEI
>Soviets ignore you once your advance stops for lack of fuel.
>Economy collapses
>Government collapses
>Military collapses
>But hey, a Veeky Forums retard will approve of your colossal idiocy.

>one man with total official power
>extreme nationalism and military focused culture
>absolute dictatorship
Oh yeah, Japan was just a military democratic ancap state.

>All authoritarian systems are fascist
Brainlet

The definition for fascism as a whole is that, yes. Just like democracy on a whole is related to people's voting. Sure there's subbranches of representative, direct etc. But in general term is your triggerword.

Or perhaps you care to tell what the honorary aryan axis power were if not falling under the requesites of fascism umbrella?

>The definition for fascism as a whole is that, yes
No it isn't, there's an entire manifesto about it, maybe you should read that first before throwing your uneducated meme opinion around about how if Japan was allied with Gemany it MUST be fascist

no

So what were they? Military nationalist dictatorship is what we call fascism.

What's next? Communism isn't classless state economy dictatorship?

It wasn't true fascism

Lol

>Military nationalist dictatorship is what we call fascism
Who's we? Brainlets? Because Latin America has a long history of military dictators long before Fascism was even a political doctrine. Japan was an Imperial state with a parliament that couldn't control its own military adventurism

>they had puppet government, see! Not real fascism!
And juntas isn't a form of fascism either I guess. Based Nippon is different!

> Military nationalist dictatorship is what we call fascism
>Juntas made up of several individuals are also fascism
Is everything right of social conservative fascism to you? Japan wasn't even a one party state until 1942 you fucking idiot, and even then it was nominal at best

>umbrella term
It's like you're really Japanese and don't understand english!

>Umbrella term
Guess all democracy is direct democracy too, because democracy is an umbrella term

Actually, you got it in reverse, but good try champ. I told you about this earlier.

Yamamoto drew up the plan as a mental exercise. He didn't really think it was actually a good idea.

I don't really care, it's no more retarded than claiming a constitutional monarchy based heavily on the Prussian system is fascist like Italy because of WW2 geopolitics, you probably thing Hungary under Horthy was fascist too

Now you're just reaching. But I realized we're derailing the topic so let's get back to it.