Recall that one of the greatest errors the Japanese suffered at the opening of the pacific theater of combat was to call off follow up strikes at Hawaii which would have struck the petroleum storage facilities there. Among other things it would have hampered our deployment/entry by probably a half year or more.
Recall that one of the greatest errors the Japanese suffered at the opening of the pacific theater of combat was to call off follow up strikes at Hawaii which would have struck the petroleum storage facilities there. Among other things it would have hampered our deployment/entry by probably a half year or more.
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There are many people who believe that the US leaked information about the purported weakness of Pearl Harbor to the Japanese and WANTED them to attack. The reasons given are that US citizens weren’t very supportive of entering a new war. People who survived WWI had children by that time and the memory was still too fresh to contemplate sending THEIR children to war. The US needed an event that would invoke that support. If that’s all true and a strike on the homeland would gin up support for entering the war, delaying their entry by destroying the petroleum facilities would have accomplished the opposite, as you correctly pointed out.
They didn't really handle Midway very well either; too dependent on 'the power of the emperor'❓ Still, they clobbered Pearl Harbor! Admiral Whoosit told them that we were a powerful manufacturing nation... would bounce back with power. They wanted to score ships more than petroleum I guess. Also didn't get our carriers at Pearl - and didn't insure the sinking of the Lexington {?} at Coral Sea.
If only they had used their satellites✔😂