Bgile wrote:I still don't understand why when the AVG wasn't "scrubbed from the sky" over many months in China, the same aircraft are going to get scrubbed from the skies over Hawaii. What's the difference?
Also, how are you going to destroy literally hundreds of facilities at Pearl with one lousy attack of 125 aircraft? I've been stationed there. It's big. You'd need nuclear weapons. And this is to say nothing of the commercial facilities at Honolulu and the many army bases all over the island.
Just curious ... how many of the Japanese aircraft were torpedo types, and how well were they trained and equipped for bombing missions? Remember, the first attack was very well rehearsed in Japan, and this additional attack the next day is going to have to be scripted to tired aircrews on the fly, so to speak.
Bgile wrote:.... You can be sure the rebuilt tanks wouldn't be so obvious, either. ....
lwd wrote:RF wrote: Given the stealth approach to north-west Hawaii over time and the relatively close proximity to the attack area would this have been a problem? In any event the presence of eight carriers would provide a substantial force for any counter-attack - if that were possible.
Well there's two considerations
1) range. IF they can't make it from the refueling point back to another safe refueling point that's a major problem.
2) speed. The run in to PH was at high speed and operations are at high speed. If the carriiers can't keep up then the force ends up split u p.
I wasn't sure what carriers you were talking about so I looked around and found three that might fit the bill.
Hosho 26 AC 25 knots
Zuiho 30 AC 28 knots
Ryujo 38 AC 29 knots
Note all are small and Hosho is definitly slow. All 3 were involved in operations vs the Philipines and may have been judged to be of much more use there in any case.
To be honest if I was the IJN Iwould want a situation where before attacking the US I would want the war in China to be over and the East Indies and Malaya to be already occupied, without any prior US military intervention.
Tiornu wrote:The Japanese were unable to defeat China, so they decided it was best to go to war with several other countries as well.
lwd wrote:Part of the difficulty in taking out all the tanks is just in the way statistics works. Say you have 20 tanks and a 50% chance of hitting. Most people would guess that 40 planes would be enough but If you assign say two planes to each tank then 25% of the tanks will survive. Even if you have 60 planes and asing 3 to each tank 12.5% wil survive (on average). I think there were something like 50+ tanks at Pearl and the likely PH of the Japanese planes was going to be less than .r in a third wave attack.
RF wrote:To be honest if I was the IJN I would want a situation where before attacking the US I would want the war in China to be over and the East Indies and Malaya to be already occupied, without any prior US military intervention. My operation would be then to attack Pearl Harbor in three waves and then immediately follow up with an all out invasion of Hawaii, with a force at least 100,000 strong. This would be feasible if Japan was fighting the US only.
RF wrote:Looking at the image above Minoru these tanks seem vulnerable to pattern bombing attack.
minoru genda wrote:.... Some would survive but I disagree with your 50% chance of hitting.
... I say it is much easier to hit one of those oil tanks than a battleship...
Now I don't know how much accurate the Japanese bombers were but it shouldn't be very difficult for them. A German Stuka won't miss.
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