The history of the Solomons naval warfare shows how important the decision to replace Ghormley with Halsey was. He was willing to slug it out despite the losses.
The second site is even more eye opening, especially what would have happened had we lost at Midway. We still would have overwhelmed them with ship construction replacing the losses. The only quibble I have is that had we lost our carriers at Midway we probably could not have sustained the Guadalcanal campaign. But that would merely have postponed the Solomons land campaign, not stopped it.
Again, I go back to the line Webster speaks late in the Band of Brothers series:
Hey, you! That's right, you stupid Kraut bastards! That's right! Say hello to Ford, and General fu@#$n' Motors! You stupid fascist pigs! Look at you! You have horses! What were you thinking? Dragging our asses half way around the world, interrupting our lives... For what, you ignorant, servile scum! What the f@#k are we doing here?
The same question could be put to the Japanese: What were you thinking???
The article points out that the Japanese leadership knew full well what they were taking on. But in their opinion, accpeting our diplomatic demands regarding China was tantamount to surrender and acceptance of permanent status as a second-rate power. Rather than accept that fate willingly, they chose the course that we force it upon them at tremendous cost. Another way of looking at it is that you can’t win if you don’t play the game. Sure, they were 24 point underdogs, but they were hoping to pull off the upset.
What I don’t think they realized was the magnitude of destruction the United States could rain down on their homeland. Even as LeMay burned out their cities and their people starved, it just didn’t seem real to them. It took two atomic bombs to make them realize just how badly they had miscalculated.