Question about Pearl Harbor

[taterguy]

How would the outcome of the war had been different if American carriers were in the harbor instead of at sea?

[exboyfil]

1. I think Japan would have stayed independent in some

negotiated settlement, but I doubt that would have held their land gains. Eventually the Chinese would have pushed them out. The Soviets may have claimed a bigger chunk of Asia as well. Once Germany fell they would have stood alone.

Port Morsbey would have fell, and Australia might have been neutralized. How island hopping would have gone???

[taterguy]

2. Does Germany fall if the carriers are in port?

No B-17 raids against Germany if they're tied up on the West Coast.

[wandy]

3. The B-17 was more than a bit too large and ungainely to be carrier based.......

Heck the 17 had enough problems with short runways. About the largest thing we could get off a carrier during WW2 was the B-25 Mitchell. Although the effects on the European effort would not have been good, the most severe impact would have been on the pacific front. Starting with rather daring effort......
The B-25 raid on Japan

[taterguy]

5. That's not the point

B-17s wouldn't have gone to Europe if they were needed on the West Coast.

Did that make the crucial difference in the war?

[exboyfil]

9. No. The Soviets would have eventually beat

the Germans and Europe would have looked quite different than today. I am not sure even a total capitulation by England would have stopped the Soviet hordes from ultimate victory. We would have continued to send the Soviets aid as well even if the Pacific looked dicey.

Hitler jumped the gun on Barbarossa and his declaration of war on us after Pearl Harbor was madness. Churchill and to a lesser extent Roosevelt were perfectly happy to fight the Germans to the last Russian. I am not sure Hitler could have put the genie back into the bottle after Barbarossa. The Russians were ticked off to the extreme. Most of the fighting in the war occurred on the eastern front. Would the extra divisions guarding the western front have made a difference? With England out of the war could we have gotten materiel to the Soviets? Could they have continued to fight effectively without U.S. aid?

The Russians turned the tied before D-Day, and we followed limited strategic objectives in Italy.

[A HERETIC I AM]

11. Don't forget how many were built.

There were 12,731 B-17's and variants assembled between the first flight in 1935 and the last delivery in 1945.

I have a couple books about military aircraft and one thing that strikes me is the numbers of the combat aircraft that were on order and cancelled at the close of the war. Cancelled orders for the B-29 alone were over 5000 aircraft. FIVE THOUSAND! And over 3000 had been delivered!

The numbers of assembled and delivered aircraft were quite frankly, staggering;

9,942 P-38 Lightnings delivered
Over 10,000 C-47's (The Douglas DC-3)
9816 B-25 "Mitchell" bombers
15,586 P-51 Mustangs of all variants
12.272 Grumman F6F Hellcats
13,738 P-40 Warhawks of all variants
19,203 B-24 Liberator bombers

And many, many more.

The British turned out many aircraft in similar numbers;
Over 7300 Avro "Lancaster" bombers built.
12,780 Hawker Hurricane fighters
20,334 (!) Supermarine Spitfire fighters. Twenty thousand!
Again, many, many more.

In the latter months of 1944 and into the spring of 1945, American production of fighting aircraft was just hitting its stride, and the numbers rolling off the numerous assembly lines around the country were, according to one article I read years ago, stressing the military's flight training schools to keep up.

In other words, we were building them faster than we could produce qualified pilots to fly them.

[wandy]

16. I think KRISPOS42 sums this up nicely in post 8.......

However, the island-hopping campaign in the Pacific would have started much later and not been so close to Japan by the time the nukes were ready. We might have had to wait several months in order to get an airfield within B-29 range of Japan.

The B-17 and B-24 would have even been more curtailed in the Pacific front without land bases. Loss of carriers would have impacted the "island-hopping campaign" where the carrier enabled use of lighter bombers such as the F4F and FU4 Corsair was vital in securing land bases that could support larger bombers.

The range limitations and fuel requirements might have even further concentrated the use of the B-17 and B-24 in Europe. At least until facilities could be secured for their effective use.

[beemer27]

4. The Allies still win

The Allies still win, but it would have taken MUCH longer. Probably 5-6 years, and the death toll would have been even more staggering. The industrial capacity and natural resources of the US would have trumped the initial gains made by the Axis, but it would not have been an easy, or short, process. There would probably have been even more pressure on the leader of the US to use the atomic bomb, and in all the theaters, not just the Pacific. We should also not forget that the scientists in Germany were close to developing their own atomic bomb. If they would have had a few more months, who knows how the war might have ended? The carriers being out to sea was an incredible stroke of good luck, not just for us, but for the rest of the world too.
This is just my take on it. There are too many variables for anyone to say for sure what the outcome might nave been.

[exboyfil]

10. The Germans weren't that close

to getting an atomic bomb. It is one the ironies of history that their racial policy led to us getting there first.

[caraher]

20. They weren't even working on a bomb

The top German physicists were actually pretty clueless in discussions secretly recorded when they heard about Hiroshima

The best evidence we have suggests that Heisenberg had no interest in building an atomic bomb. In mid-1942, Albert Speer, the weapons minister, asked Heisenberg whether he could produce a weapon in nine months. With a clear conscience he could answer "No." And he did not know how much fissionable material he would need. When, on occasion, friends asked him, his replies were varied and vague, ranging from 10 kilograms to a few tons.

Why didn't he know? Why hadn't pure intellectual curiosity led him to investigate the properties of uranium-235 with fast neutrons? He could have made a small amount using the cyclotrons available in both Paris and Copenhagen. But he never asked that these properties be measured. The best proof of his lack of interest came at the end of the war. Heisenberg and about ten other German nuclear scientists were interned at Farm Hall, a country estate in England. All of their conversations were secretly taped. When the news of the Hiroshima atomic bomb was broadcast, these scientists could not believe it. When they recognized that it was real, they asked Heisenberg how it could have been done. His first attempt at explanation was totally wrong! He hypothesized something like a nuclear reactor, with the neutrons slowed by many collisions with a moderator.

That he was capable of doing the work was shown about a week later when, in another lecture, he corrected himself and presented a theory similar to that worked out by Rudolf Peierls and Otto Frisch in 1940. He estimated the necessary amount of uranium-235 at about 20 kg, which is nearly correct. These two lectures prove to me that Heisenberg, the scientific leader of the German effort, did not work on a bomb. They show that he did not know critical information, and that he could have derived the information if he had tried.

[leveymg]

6. Pacific War would have gone on another year. Europe would still have ended in '45 - we might have

ended up nuking Berlin first. Who knows?

[NoPasaran]

7. Even if the three Pacific fleet carriers were at Pearl

The US had more carriers in the Atlantic, Yorktown. Ranger, and Wasp. And Hornet was on the verge of entering service. Also, the first hulls of the Essex class were on the shipways.

Still, if the carriers had been eliminated there would have been very little left to strike back at the Japanese in 1942. Of course, by the time of Midway, the Japanese had pretty much expanded their military perimeter as far as they reasonably could. They probably would have been able to complete the conquest of New Guinea and Australia would have had a harder time of it than they did, but I still think in the long run the Allies win, although the war in the Pacific lasts longer than it did.

One possibility to consider: if the US offensive against the Japanese is delayed until sometime in 1943 or 1944 (instead of getting underway in the Solomons in 1942), perhaps more landing craft are available for use in the European Theater, making possible earlier/larger/additional amphibious assaults on the continent.

[krispos42]

8. We would have lost the battle of Midway.

Japan might even had had the gumption to invade and occupy Hawaii.


Ultimately we would have won, of course. Japan's industrial output was way overmatched by ours.


I do not know if the war would have lasted longer. Japan's taking of Midway would not have affected the Manhattan Project, so we still would have had a working nuclear weapon in July of 1945.

However, the island-hopping campaign in the Pacific would have started much later and not been so close to Japan by the time the nukes were ready. We might have had to wait several months in order to get an airfield within B-29 range of Japan.

Or, alternatively, we could have sent the bombers on one-way missions, and had the crews ditch in the ocean, perhaps to be rescued by submarine.

[Major Nikon]

12. It would have been different if the Japanese would have just bombed the fuel reserves at Pearl

The bombing of PH wasn't that much of a victory for the Japanese. 3 of the battleships were back in service within a month. Had the fuel reserves been destroyed, it possibly could have set the American war in the Pacific back a year or more.

[longship]

13. Yes. That pushes the Pacific fleet back to the west coast.

It was Nagumo's big mistake. A third wave attack at Pearl Harbor happens and Japan's catastrophic defeat at Midway does NOT happen because the fleet has to retreat and sortie from the coast.

That would have been devastating for the US.

[taterguy]

14. A third wave exposes the Japanese carriers to American counter-attack

And none of their offensive operations in the next six months would have been possible.

[Major Nikon]

15. They could have easily destroyed the fuel reserves in the 1st or 2nd wave

It would have only taken a few aircraft. It was a huge strategic blunder for the Japanese not to have done so and a huge tactical failure of the on scene commander during the attack.

[taterguy]

17. Easy from the comfort of your couch

In actual combat, not so easy.

[Major Nikon]

19. I got the impression this whole thread was about armchair quarterbacking

I don't think it would have been hard during the actual combat. Since the aircraft carriers were not at Pearl, the Japanese had a lot of aircraft that were redirected to other targets via the commander on station who was circling over the battle. Many of the aircraft had to fly right over the fuel farm to get to their other targets. The Japanese had no problems destroying the fuel tanks at Midway, so I don't see any technical hurdles to destroying the ones at Pearl. It's just a matter of having the right ordinance for the job and many of the planes were already equipped with 500lb bombs and incendiary ammo.

[taterguy]

21. You can't be serious

The Japanese were able to destroy Midway's much smaller fuel farm, but didn't destroy the airfield so they had to prepare a second strike, which made them vulnerable to American counterattack, which is exactly what they were trying to avoid at Pearl Harbor.

This thread isn't about armchair (or couch) quarterbacking. It's about speculating how history may have been different.

[Major Nikon]

22. You say tomato, I say...

[caraher]

18. The outcome? Japan still falls in 1945, but possibly a different postwar world

Probably the war would not have lasted much longer, not so much because of the atomic bomb (which would have been available at basically the same time anyway) but because the Russians would have played a much bigger role in the endgame than they actually did.

If the carriers were sunk at Pearl they might even have been raised like most of the battleships were, but by mid-war we were making so many CVs that starting down by a couple would make very little difference in the overall strength of the growing Navy. The two things their early loss would do is set back the timetable for when the IJN had to switch from an offensive to a defensive posture and preserve their crack naval aviators longer. So by mid-1945 it's conceivable the bombing campaign against Japan might not have gone very far for lack of those island bases, and the atomic bombing itself might have been an iffy proposition.

Their loss would not have affected much the extremely effective submarine campaign against Japan. Economically, they would certainly have been on the ropes by summer 1945. So when Uncle Joe hits Manchuria in August 1945 it has essentially the same effect as it did historically, except with the US possibly in a somewhat weaker territorial position and Stalin in a potentially better position to shape the postwar world in the Pacific.

[1-Old-Man]

23. My father, who fought as a Marine in the Pacific during WW-II, told me that when I was a kid

My father explained that to me when I was an early teenager. He told me that we had forced Japan into the war, and he did not know why. That said the war shattered him emotionally, the man was a wreck all his life. He did not seem to harbor any particular hatred for the Japanese, who he had fought hard against, but despised black people, who he had fought with. Who can explain it?