“Had Japan annihilated the rest of the Pacific Fleet carriers, it would have taken Midway. With land-based planes on Midway, it would have taken Hawaii. With Hawaii…well, who knows? Maybe San Francisco, maybe Alaska. Maybe pause in the Pacific and knock out the British in India. And then maybe peace, under a new Pax Japania.”
Midway was a turning point for us in a sense because our headlong momentum began there, but a defeat there would have maybe prolonged the war by 6 months at best. Japan was 100% guaranteed defeat the moment the first plane released a bomb over Pearl Harbor. It’s beyond debate.
Read this if you have doubts, “why Japan really lost the war”. Its about the astounding production capacity of the USA then. Japan had no hope, period.
http://www.combinedfleet.com/economic.htm
Even if the Japanese carriers had prevailed, there was no way Ichiki and his 3000 men with just small arms were going to take Midway by amphibious assault.
We were dug in with artillery, massive quantities of machine guns, and even a 1/2 dozen Stuart tanks.
Most of them would have become fish food during that long wade to the beach.
At the beginning of the American Civil War The South had the better army, better generals, and superior infantrymen. The South did not have near the industrial capacity of the North.
The South lost!