Who was more delusional during WW2:

Who was more delusional during WW2:

>Germany thinking they could pull off a 2 front war
>Japan thinking they could beat America

Japan is a weird case because its generals and admirals openly acknowledged in their memoirs that they would lose the war, but they went ahead and did it anyway to save face in front of each other and the rest of the world. Literally playing chicken with their empire.

Definitely Japan. Germany's ability to project force up until 1943 or so was almost always constrained more by local logistical infrastructure limitations than anything else. They had spare troops to throw in North Africa, just not the port or road capacity to supply them. Similar problems existed (although to a much lesser extent) in Russia. It's only when you get major commitments in Italy and France that overall troop counts become the limiting factor.

If you can't put all of your forces in one front anyway, a second front is bad, but not catastrophic. Meanwhile, Japan is already stymied in a land war with unclear strategic direction (china) worried about the Soviets to their North, so clearly, attacking a country that can outbuild them 8:1 while focusing equally or more on Europe is a fucking retarded idea in any permutation.

Germany was trapped into a two front war.

Japan didn't care if they could beat America. Dying for the God emperor was seen honorable. Hence, kamikaze.

I think this is only true because of the failure of Pearl Harbor. Had that actually succeeded and they had sunk a significant portion of the carrier fleet, I doubt the war would have gone well for us.

Not that user, but the U.S. was reduced to one active carrier in the Pacific after the battle of Santa Cruz islands. It didn't allow the Japanese to take the initiative, and even if the 2 carriers assigned to the Pacific fleet (out of 7 pre-war ones) were both sunk, it wouldn't have meant a damn. The U.S. can reinforce their islands with enough land based planes to make them virtually unassailable, a trick that Japan doesn't have the industrial capacity to replicate. The shipyards that built the Essexes are all on the East Coast, far out of Japan's reach. Even if the Japanese sink all the pre-war ones, it's only a matter of time before those new vessels come on line and shitstomp everything.

You under-estimate the power of wartime production.

Santa Cruz was after a lot of major naval battles and key US victories, namely Midway.

>Not that user, but the U.S. was reduced to one active carrier in the Pacific after the battle of Santa Cruz islands.
Which didn't really help Japan considering they, too, were down to one active carrier.

Your point being? Japan held a (albeit temporary) massive advantage in carrier aviation. However, due to the lack of things like invasion craft, land troops that were unoccupied elsewhere, or ability to take on entrenched land based airplanes, they could not and did not attack. Even before Midway, that fundamental picture doesn't change.

I would agree Japanese offensive of islands was poor, but to try to defend my stance, I could easily imagine a scenario in which enough of the US carrier fleet is disabled during Pearl Harbor so that the Japanese air naval advantage becomes significant enough to dominate the pacific and isolate hawaii and any other major US pacific base. Even most of the US offense was based on island hoping since ground based planes were the major workhorses. If the US became limited to operating off the West coast, that would have been a disaster.

>Japan held a (albeit temporary) massive advantage in carrier aviation
Are you retarded? They were down to Zuikaku as their sole fleet carrier from late 1942 to late 1943.

The absolute worst case scenario at Pearl Harbor is the trio of the Pacific Fleet carriers all being at Pearl and all being sunk. That still leaves the Hornet, Wasp, and Bunker Hill, assuming the Ranger isn't going in the Pacific a la real life.

>so that the Japanese air naval advantage becomes significant enough to dominate the pacific and isolate hawaii and any other major US pacific base.
How the hell are they going to do this? Places like Pago Pago, Dutch Harbor, and Pearl are all really fucking far away from the Japanese bases of support, and all host large airfields. Trying to keep any one of them blockaded is going to be difficult, and all three (let alone if the U.S. tries to do something fancy, like set up shop in Australia or India in a big way that they never really had to consider in real life), is impossible. And the U.S. has plenty of time to build up as many Essexes as they want.


>If the US became limited to operating off the West coast, that would have been a disaster.
It wouldn't be though. It took every single tanker Japan had just to keep their fleet going all the way to Pearl Harbor, strike, and then head back. They can't afford to stick around and blockade the island indefinitely, and even if they did, the U.S. has alternate routes in and other little islands that they can operate from. If the U.S. offensive starts from the Marquesas instead of the Hawaiian Islands, Japan at best gets some time, which isn't on her side anyway.

Hiyo and Junyo were capable of carrying plenty of aircraft, albeit too slowly to be used in the Combined Fleet. And Shokaku was back up in May, slightly after the Taiho was activated. That's not "Late" 43 by any stretch.

Essex was commissioned December 42, completed shakedown in March, and was in theater by May.

I'd put my money on Essex+Enterprise (with their new Hellcat squadrons) over Shokaku+Zuikaku any day.

But even then the US was mostly uses the F4F and TBD...

Essex with her squadrons of SBD, TBF, and F6F, May 43.

So let's assume they lose the carriers at Pearl plus the same losses in other battles as historically - ie they have no carriers left by the end of 1942.

So the Japanese have 5 fleet carriers. The US would be able to match this strength by August 1943. They'll have 7 by the end of the year. They'll have 13 by the end of 1944.

They Japanese simply have no chance here. They cannot mass-produce carriers like that.

*14, should have said 14

Yes, that's what I said here Hell, it's even the exact point I made with the original bringing up of Santa Cruz back here> The U.S. can reinforce their islands with enough land based planes to make them virtually unassailable, a trick that Japan doesn't have the industrial capacity to replicate. The shipyards that built the Essexes are all on the East Coast, far out of Japan's reach. Even if the Japanese sink all the pre-war ones, it's only a matter of time before those new vessels come on line and shitstomp everything.

I was only disputing the claim that Japan only had 1 carrier left after Santa Cruz, nothing more. I brought it up to demonstrate that even when they had an EXTREMELY temporary advantage in CVP, they weren't able to take advantage of it because of all the other things they were lacking as well. And in this context "Take advantage" means grabbing back some stupid pacific islands from the U.S., not even something like taking Hawaii, which itself doesn't touch the production bases of the Americans, nor does it put them out of options for force projection in the Pacific.

>Hiyo and Junyo were capable of carrying plenty of aircraft
Hiyo and Junyo were not capable of offensive operations, and if you are going to insist that they were, then so were the American escort carriers.

>albeit too slowly to be used in the Combined Fleet
Do you even know what the Combined Fleet is? It just means the Japanese navy.

>And Shokaku was back up in May, slightly after the Taiho was activated. That's not "Late" 43 by any stretch.
Erm, what the fuck is your point exactly? First of all, Taiho wasn't "activated" in 1943. It was launched, and wouldn't be commissioned until 1944.
And by May 1943, CV-9 and CV-10 are operational. Are you saying that Zuikaku + Shokaku vs CV-6, CV-9, and CV-10 equals "massive advantage in carrier aviation" for Japan?
Just admit that you made a dumb fucking post and cut your losses.

Japan.

Keep in mind that prior to the invasion of the soviet union, every nation Germany went up against they absolutely crushed within like a month or less.

Germany didn't think they could pull off a two front war. They planned to use Russia's resources to overcome Britain after Russia's defeat, but perfidious objected.

Japan bombing the most heavily industrialized nation on earth. Those fuckers were downright retarded.

Japan should've stuck to fighting the Chinese

Japan was hoping for a miracle.

It's a lot more complicated then Japan thinking they could beat America. It's not as though Japan thought they could beat America in a indefinite total war.

The problem with Japan, like a lot of militaries, was that they were fighting the last War. And their previous experience showed they can defeat stronger powers by putting on enough of a show of force thus making them come to the negotiating table. (Russia and China).

So what's the issue here? America is not Tsarist Russia or China. They weren't distracted by serious domestic issues which made them more likely to come to the negotiating table to end a shitty war in favor of preserving peace at home. They did not have Russia's problems (a pissed off populace increasingly angry about the slow pace of reform) or China's problems (a corrupt and decentralised military ran largely by local cliques).

they would have if they weren't being embargoed and running out of resources. do you really think they attacked the US and UK for shits and giggles? what they really should've done, is not sacrifice the whole fucking country just so the IJA can have their playground in china.

Definitely Japan