Yes, volumes have been written.
They simply leave out a few key things, which I don’t have time to dig up links on.
Simple common sense, however, is enough to see:
The top elites of the US, and their man, FDR, and the top elites of the UK, and their man, Churchill, desperately wanted the US to enter the war.
A radical shift in US public opinion needed to be manufactured for this to happen.
And it was pretty obvious that war was inevitable and the US was preparing for war.
If there was no Japanese attack, US public opinion would not have supported war.
Of course, if the Japanese did attack, it’s only sensible to imagine that they would try to strike a knockout blow in the first round to US Pacific military operations.
There weren’t many other realistic options for how the story would play out.
However, if top US leadership prepared adequately and the attack damage was minimized, i.e., the battle was relatively “even”, US public opinion would not have been so cranked up over retribution in the coming war. Having such a disaster happen provided the carte blanche the planners were looking for from the American people, paving the way for an all-out war effort.
“Of course, if the Japanese did attack, it’s only sensible to imagine that they would try to strike a knockout blow in the first round to US Pacific military operations.”
The Japanese originally did not think so at all. Yamamoto had to put his reputation and credibility on the line and demand the adoption of his own Pearl Harbor strike plan contrary to decades of pre-war planning for a decisive battle with the U.S. Navy somewhere at sea and close to the Japanese naval bases.
“There weren’t many other realistic options for how the story would play out.”
On the contrary, there were numerous other Japanese naval war plans which did not have anything to do at all with attacking the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor. Yamamoto’s strike plan for Pearl Harbor was an innovation Japan had been incapable of performing until special measures were taken to acquire the technical capabilities to make the raid possible. These included among many other special preparations Japan’s first underway refueling of a carrier task force, developed specifically to attack Pearl Harbor; and special aerial torpedoes capable of being dropped and operating in the shallow waters of Pearl Harbor.
“However, if top US leadership prepared adequately and the attack damage was minimized, i.e., the battle was relatively “even”, US public opinion would not have been so cranked up over retribution in the coming war. Having such a disaster happen provided the carte blanche the planners were looking for from the American people, paving the way for an all-out war effort.”
That is a myth, because the American public opinion would also have been sufficiently inflamed by the Japanese atrocities in the Philippines to have served the same purpose as the attack upon Pearl Harbor. So, the Japanese war of aggression against the territories of the United states would have left no alternative but the kind of war we experienced whether or not the U.S. Pacific Fleet was forward based in the Hawaiian Islands.
Also, the worst part of the Japanese attack upon Pearl Harbor were the casualties we suffered and the loss of the military and naval aircraft. The loss and damage suffered by the Pacific Fleet’s battleships and cruisers caused no serious damage to the strategic and tactical capabilities of the U.S. Navy in the war. The sunk and damaged battleships were obsolescent and could play no important roles in the first year or two of the war.
In terms of a knockout blow U.S. War Plan Orange and the corresponding Japanese plan, which was generally known to us, envisioned the supreme naval battle would be fought in the Western Pacific. Both navies were disciples of Alfred Thayer Mahan who wrote the outcome of war at sea would always be decided by the “decisive naval battle”. Past history bore that out at Trafalgar, Tsushima, and Jutland. For Jutland Churchill said, “Jellicoe was the one man who could have lost the war in an afternoon”.
When Yamamoto proposed this radical departure from Japanese strategic principles only his firm commitment to resign at a meeting in October 1941 forced the Naval General Staff to accept his radical departure from existing plans or find another fleet commander. In this country Plan Orange continued to determine the most probable interpretation to place on intelligence and events.
Submarine action, sabotage, and an air raid were considered possibilities, but a six carrier task force was not on anyone’s radar. (Sorry about the pun.)