They didn’t. They thought a pre-emptive decapitating attack would sideline us for the duration.

It would have taken us an extra year or two to get to fighting strength in the Pacific.

Either way we would have had nukes in 45 and probably would have used them heavily on the Japanese mainland even if it meant coming in from China.

This, they had defeated the Russians in big naval battles and the Russians sued for peace = Japan got what they wanted. They figured that the US would do the same thing being so far away and in bad economic shape = Poor intelligence predictions by Japan.

They guessed that the US would stay out of Asia and that they would be able to keep Korea, South East Asia, Indonesia and keep pushing into China. All they ended up doing was kicking the hornets nest and turning an isolationist America into a Gung ho War footing America.

As bad as the attack was they failed, they didn’t count on our three carriers being out too sea.

Because our aircraft carriers were still supposed to be there and they knew their ally Germany was going to declare war against US anyway.

More like the timing was off.

Had Japan successfully got the carriers and the whole kitty, we would have lost Hawaii and the Pacific.

The assets the USN on the west coast at the time really wasn't jack sh*t. Especially against a full Japanese fleet.

ETA: The attack on Hawaii was supposed to be a siege of the islands. Once the IJN realized the carriers weren't there, they panicked and ran.

They didn’t want to draw us in. They wanted to destroy the entire pacific fleet to keep us from intervening in their imperialist moves. Missing our carriers and not fully understanding our productive capacity was a major mistake.

If the Germans hadn't had to bail out the inept Italians in Yugoslavia in the spring of 1941, the invasion of the USSR would have started in mid-May instead of June 22nd. With 5 more weeks of good campaign weather before the Russian winter, along with the availability of all the fuel and other supplies wasted helping the Eyeties, Moscow would have in all likelihood fallen. Would Stalin have withdrawn to the Urals to keep fighting or would Hitler have accepted a negotiated peace if offered?

Yep.  People don't seem to appreciate that the US Navy did with submarines to the Japanese what the Germans tried (and failed) to do to the British with their U-boats.

Imo, even destroying every USN carrier based out of Pearl Harbor, the Japanese still would have lost the war.

Forgot about this one.

The Japanese had their heads way up their asses when it came to the potential of their subs too. They essentially used them in the least effective way imaginable.

If they had used them like the Germans, they could have been a major pain in the ass.

in 51 years they went from bow and arrows to defeating Russia one of the largest countries in the world - Japan had confidence.

They could not begin to match American industrial capacity. By the end of the war we had produced more aircraft than the entire axis combined. That does not account for production by the British or the soviets. There was a similar mismatch with naval vessels, cargo ship, tanks, trucks, and on and on.

We will not have that advantage in the next war.

The only problem is, leadership at the time didn't realize that battleships were obsolete and carriers were the new naval power.  Look at the dates that our carriers were commissioned.  Look at the research still going into the 'next generation' of battleships that never actually were constructed.

So if they were going to leave less valuable assets at Pearl and move the more valuable assets out, they would have left the carriers and moved out the BBs.

Edit to add: That might be a little harsh, most did realize that aircraft carriers were very effective naval vessels, but didn't really have an idea of exactly how much they outclassed BBs by.  We did know that BBs where very capable of dodging bombs and being very hard targets to hit (which the Japanese did a ton of during the battle of Midway) and we also overestimated the effectiveness of anti-aircraft weaponry on surface vessels.  So when you think a BB can both effectively dodge a lot of attacks plus shoot many planes out of the sky, the dominance of aircraft carriers isn't nearly as clear.  US was planning on building 18 new carriers, but it was going to be 4 big ones and 16 smaller ones (we wanted aircraft carriers to be able to accompany supply fleets as they crossed the mid-atlantic gap for anti-submarine purposes more than we did for going toe-to-toe with other navies)  but we were also planning on 7 new battleships and 6 super-cruisers, and 30 regular size cruisers.  Note that 5 of the 7 new battleships were to be of a new class called Montana that were to outclass the mighty Yamato

This is both true and untrue.

It's true that we look at things after knowing the 'answers' and we have to think about what they knew.

Japan did not have state of the art technology...but they thought they did.  Radar incorporated into the targeting system was state of the art and when shells were flying this was proven.  Japan had this idea that they had the biggest and best cannons.  Well they had the biggest but if you couldn't hit then it was all for naught.  They couldn't hit with anything nearly as reliably as the US with the vast majority of their ships.  

This is why they failed to hit anything at Leyette Gulf, and yet we peppered the hell out of them with 5 inch guns.  Hell, or fleeing escort aircraft carriers, who had 5 inch guns on their ass ends, landed multiple hits.  

Now, US navy at the time didn't know that radar assisted targeting was going to be such a big thing (or the absence of it was going to be a big thing)  they looked at just the 'regular' BBs Japan had and worried about them, but in truth our heavy cruisers were a match for their regular BBs and out destroyers were a match for their cruisers because of such better fire control.

Japan was also very very behind on fire containment technology and repair technology.  Nor did they spend much time training for such.  Partly this was just their 'attack attack' mindset, to train to put out fires was to train that you would fail.

Where are you getting this from?

We recovered all sorts of battle plans and many of the surviving naval officers were more than willing to talk and explain what they were thinking and why, and I have never heard any of this

I'm not sure where the idea that the Japanese didn't use their subs correctly comes from, but it is flat out wrong. First, Japanese boats targeted warships and merchants fairly equally, and put up nearly identical numbers to British and Italian boats despite fighting a much tougher war. Second, a German or US style starvation campaign would never have worked for them because the US is not an island that can be starved out.

https://influenceofhistory.blogspot.com/2018/06/wwii-submarine-effectiveness-by-nation.html



The attack on Pearl was always supposed to be a quick raid - if the IJN had stuck around they wouldn't have had the fuel to get home. Even if they had somehow sunk all three Pacific carriers, we could have redeployed the entire Atlantic fleet long before the massively overextended Japanese scraped together the logistics to mount even a small assault on Hawaii. And it needs to be remembered that Hawaii was protected by thousands of US Army soldiers, hundred of USAAC fighters and bombers, and dozens of battleship caliber coastal artillery pieces. If the Japanese had committed to such an operation, it would likely have lost them the war - but they never would have attempted such a thing because their entire Pacific strategy and doctrine for the decades leading up to the war revolved around their fighting a defensive campaign of attrition across the Pacific culminating in a decisive battle in their home waters.

Video's title is "Kantai Kessen (Japanese Decisive Battle Doctrine) - Method or Madness?" by Drachinifel

They thought that if they could deal sufficient enough of a blow, they would have time to secure the oil they wanted and we would be forced to sue for peace. They chose poorly.

What did the USA say after the first bomb and Japan still wouldn't give up?

Not entirely true, there were many who had been to this country and knew of our production abilities, unfortunately, they were voices in the wilderness at the time.

The effectiveness of AA fire from the battleships was due more to shitty tactics on our part. Our bomb and torpedo delivery tactics were poor. Add to this the shitty quality of our torpedos and it's a wonder we did as well as we did at Midway

Japan had horrible AA practices early on in the war. They'd spread out the fleet for maneuver room, which greatly limited the amount of AA they could focus with.

Bomb delivery was just fine. Some of the Midway stationed dive bombers did glide bombing due to lack of experience but the CV based ones were fairly competent. Our SBDs were by and large our primary damage dealer of the early war timeframe, at least til Avengers were fielded in numbers and the torps were fixed. Ironic, as Japanese CAP would prioritize torpedo bombers as the greater threat, hence the horrendous losses to our torp planes early on

History repeats itself.

China anyone?

In a way, this bears on the "carriers had replaced battleships" idea.

 Pre-war, you had 600 - 750 horsepower aircraft cruising at 130 or so knots carrying 1000 pound payload 900 to 1000 miles.  But only in daylight, with good weather.  

At the start of the war you had 1000 - 1200 HP aircraft cruising at 160 knots carrying 2000 pound payload to 1200 miles.

By 1944 you had 1900 - 2200 HP aircraft cruising at similar or higher speeds carrying 3000 pounds of bombs to a range of 1200 miles with the beginings of night and all-weather operations.

The aircraft (and aircrew) are what carriers "throw" at the enemy.  As the capability of the aircraft increased, so did their striking power.  It was not until late in the war that the striking power of the carrier, along with the increase in the numbers of carriers, as well as the absence of surface opposition, enabled carrier operations to almost completely replace the battleship.

Spot on...  MacArthur was a vain, vindictive twit. His mishandling of the Philippine defense should have ended his career.

Yup, they never planned on taking Hawaii, they simply wanted to break the fleet that allowed US to extend our influence so far beyond Pearl.  They didn't want us to easily mess with what they desired to do at Wake and the Marshall islands.  They knew that they had no ability to actually take over Hawaii, but they could make it so out sphere of influence ended 100 km out from Hawaii.