It wouldn’t have delayed our entry “declaration” wise, but delayed the deployment and out-massing of our material and equipment.
And I’ve no doubt that we “goaded” them into playing their hand early. We cut off oil and scrap steel to them, and they had to replace that post haste AND get things producing materials up o begin to suffer a increasing material deficit.
At that time the US could, on literally a moments notice, out produce the ENTIRE PLANET in “stuff”. The one momentary advatage Japan had was more robust naval air arm, numerically and experience wise. The huge disadvantage they had was a command structure that was very rigid and inflexible to “thinking outside the box” and taking personal initiative.
Roosevelt/admin wanted to get into the European theater to keep Germany from rolling the continent. That idea was pretty unpopular with American citizenry, to the tune of like 70% up until 40/41. They knew that Hitler would uphold his end of the Triple Alliance commitment and declare war on anyone the other alliance members got into conflict with and lo and behold he declared 3 days after.
Here comes our prayer time...3:15 Eastern.
Pray for our country. Pray for FRens.
A prudent man sees evil and hides himself, the naive proceed and pay the penalty.
Prov. 27:12 NASB