To me the amazing thing about the carrier story in WWII is the story of carrier numbers.
The Japanese had 10 carriers in 1941. We had 7.
At the end of the war, we had something like 95 (counting some smaller escort “carriers”) or 70 (counting only the larger ones).
Although the Battle of Midway deserves to be called The Day The Japanese Lost the War, and though the Americans who fought and died at Midway deserve all the praise and honor we can heap on them... the fact is, even without Midway, those 95 carriers would have totally destroyed the Japanese Navy.
I have a question that I’ve always wondered about and want to ask here: was the island-hopping really necessary? We DID destroy the Japanese Navy. Couldn’t we have just skipped a bunch of islands (including the Phillipines) and only taken those close enough to Japan to enable our heavy, island-based bomber force to launch bombing runs against Japan?
Just a question I’ve always wondered about, not trying to start an argument.
Well you need staging areas to group forces & supplies. There’s also the issue of land based air from those islands that would threaten your staging areas & your fleet.
“We DID destroy the Japanese Navy. Couldn’t we have just skipped a bunch of islands (including the Phillipines) and only taken those close enough to Japan to enable our heavy, island-based bomber force to launch bombing runs against Japan?”
Possibly. But War Plan Orange — which I believed began in the 1920’s — had a basic 2-prong approach. One thrust up from Australia-New Guinea and another from across the central Pacific. The concept was to keep the Japanese guessing and shifting their slender resources. MacArthur makes a push here while Nimitz prepares his next move elsewhere, and visa versa. Keep them trapped between 2 fires so that they can’t focus their efforts.
As to the island-hopping. You couldn’t move ships unless you controlled the air. You needed an chain of air bases to sustain the air umbrella AND you needed the corridors to be wide enough that the enemy bases were out-of-range. So if you look at where the first thrusts were made (Guadalcanal, Gilberts (Tarawa)) you can pretty accurately predict where the next move would be. In this war the range and endurance of aircraft dictated everything.
Yes we absolutely could have. And that was the Nimitz strategy. But the astonishing ego of MacArthur had to be appeased, and his mom use political influence on FDR to give MacArthur a campaign. Nimitz intent was the basically quickly kill the Japanese Fleet, advance to Formosa, and form bomber bases and navy bases to attack Japan. Douglas MacArthur probably prolonged the Pacific War by 9 months 2 a year and cost thousands of lives.