Pearl Harbor

https://youtu.be/0MUsVcYhERY

>>2145625
>filthy amerigaijin weak and cowardly, we blow up their fleet in the harbor and they'll surely sue for peace t. yamamoto
>manage to miss actually valuable ships thanks to shit timing and bomb obsolete battleships instead of going for dry docks&oil storage facilities

They were thinking that fate is on the side of the courageous and that they are superior race of warriors that will prevail against spoiled degenerate US.
But shit doesn't work that way.

>>2145625
They were backed into a corner because of their stupid policy towards China. Their only alternative was to calmly step down and lose the war in China (which had already cost them thousands of lives and millions of Yen) and give up on their economic gains in Manchuria.

They decided to gamble rather than face certain defeat.

>>2145625
They largely figured war with the US was inevitable and that their only hope for victory was to strike first and cripple the US before they could react.
The entire Pacific War after that, they largely knew they'd lost and were just trying to delay the inevitable

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>>2145851
>>2145838
>>2145828
>>2145816
Okay, but what was HE THINKING?!

>>2145625
The Japs thought America was going to attack either way, and even if it didn't, the embargo would still suffocate Japan.
Generally when people do stupid, suicidal shit in warfare it's not because they're stupid, but because they come to realize that they're probably fucked either way and have no other choice than to try their luck.

OTOH Athens invading Sicily during the Peloponnesian War was stupid as fuck and you can't defend it.

>>2145857
Too many amphetamines

>>2145625
Japs had nothing to do with it, once again the US government attacks it's own people to start a war

>>2145864
In Nips' case they had plenty of plain old idiocy mixed in it.
>don't use your submarines to harass enemy supply lines and merchant shipping even though ww1 germans, pretty much everyone else during ww2. and your own fucking pre-war wargames have proven it to be far more effective way to use submarines than solely focus on trying to sink enemy warships

>>2145857
>maybe now they will open a second front against the Soviets instead of letting the far eastern army march to moscow
Trust a jap
get a slap

>>2145893
Japan has always been pretty shitty ally desu.

>>2145893

Actually they did keep their non-agresion pact with the Soviet Union, so the trust was right.

But as a Naziboo you just want someone else to blame about your failures.

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>>2145864
>muh allies
>muh gold plates for fighting Sparta
>Muhlcibiades

>>2145905
>But as a Naziboo you just want someone else to blame about your failures.
>muh naziboo
How deluded are you to interpret my post as an excuse for Germanys failure?

>>2145924

Sorry, I dont read Naziboo, Naziboo.

>>2145884
Both the Japanese and Americans felt that the War in the Pacific would boil down to one single massive conclusive battle using battleships v. battleships not too unlike Jutland.

Due to treaties Japan had a smaller battleship force and was thus at a disadvantage. It's one of the reasons Pearl looked so promising, and effective, to them.

Furthermore, since they had a battleship disadvantage, they also practiced and perfected methods to whittle down American battleships with long range torpedo bombers, torpedo strikes from both destroyers and submarines, night fighting, etc. The goal was to sink battleships and eliminate the American advantage in battleships.

Pearl ended up doing that for them, and they still had these wonderful torpedos and the submarines and destroyers to use them. And they all turned out quite effective, sinking several of the carriers that escaped Pearl a few months later.

And besides, the Japan submarine fleet could never have been as effective against the U.S. as it was against Japan.

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>>2145625

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>>2145625

>Japan wanted to take over the pacific

>see america as biggest threat to this

>master plan is formed

>they will enact a huge naval attack that will strike at the American Navy and utterly destory it and cripple America while also taking key points in asia

>this way, by the time America is able to rebuild its navy and regroup, it will be too late as Japan will have control of asia

Japan invaded Hong Kong and The Philippines on the same day

>>2145925
>/pol/ false flagging and thinking it isn't obvious

>>2145857
Hitler was a gambler.

>>2145985

;-.)

>>2145857

He hoped that declaring war on America would cause Japan to declare war on the Soviet Union so they could double team them. I dont know if this is true, but I suspect this would never happen because the Japanese sense of honor would not permit them to declare war on a nation they had just signed a non aggression pact with

>>2145997
>not knowing the USSR BTFO the Japanese at Khalkin Gol before WW2 proper even started

>>2145997
>japs
>honour

Kek, them trying to go for easier targets in the south rather than trying to start shit again with Soviets.

>>2145857
It's simple. The US had already joined the Allies via the Lend Lease act. Outright war was inevitable. By declaring war Germany didn't have to care about antagonizing the US anymore by sinking trade ships but more importantly Hitler hoped Japan would open up a new front against Russia in the East. Japan had defeated Russia before.

And let's be clear here. there was no good reason to expect the US would go balls to the wall with the war effort.

>>2146034
>. there was no good reason to expect the US would go balls to the wall with the war effort.

because in their arrogance, the axis powers failed completely in understanding americans.

>>2146039
Lusitania&Zimmermann telegram should had been enough to make most people to figure out that Americans go into full 'tard rage mode when they feel threatened.

>>2146039
I think this idea is too widely held. Without letting hindsight blind you to the evidence of the time, there was no good reason to expect such a Herculean effort from America. I mean, if Japan had actually declared war then the American propaganda machine may have utterly failed to convince the American people that this was a war worth fighting, at least not to the same degree they did.

I feel like WW2 is such a defining part of the American psyche today that Americans have a hard time imagining America, both domestically and their image abroad, before WW2.

>>2146048
America didn't do shit after the Lusitania.

>>2145997
>Japanese sense of honor

Seemed to be a-okay with them attacking the US while they were in the middle of diplomatic negotiations with them.

>>2146144
>in the middle
Except no. The negotiations had failed and no one thought otherwise. .

>>2146169
The ultimatum was that: an ultimatum. It was not a declaration of war.

And the fact that they attacked while the diplomats were still in Washington meant they had been planning the attack while they were there; maybe even before they sent those so same diplomats. They were negotiating in bad faith from the very beginning.

>>2146189
I should clarify; that was the mindset of the public. We know now that the Japanese were in fact planning to attack Pearl Harbor before they sent the diplomatic team.

>>2145857
>Jap battleship set afire
>december 1941


...huh? the only battleships that were sunk that month were US and british.

>>2146202
It didn't say it was sunk. Read the battle of the Philippines story.

An American bomber scores 3 hits on a japanese warship.

>>2146189
I reiterate, negotiations had broken down before the outbreak of war. So you are wrong by claiming they attacked in the middle of negotiations, at least not in any meaningful sense.

>>2146144
From what I remember, the pilots actually were quite upset afterwards when they found out that War had not been properly declared when they did attack Pearl Harbor.

>>2145857
Hitler never declared war on anybody. Remember, this is what they want you to think.

>>2146222
The ultimatum had not been delivered, war had not been declared, and the negotiation team was still in DC.

>>2146081
You think the failure of the Phillipines was the event the axis powers based their image of america on?

>>2146215
>>2146202
It wasn't either, actually. That's talking about Colin Kelley's attack on what he thought was the Haruna, but was probably just one of the IJN's heavy cruisers.

>>2146305
That's what I thought; the Japanese wouldn't have risked their battleships so early in the war, hell they didn't even risk their Yamatos until the war was basically over for them.

>>2146308
It was more that the Haruna was someplace else. I think it was off China at the time?

>>2145997
>Japanese sense of honor

Lol

>>2146222
You are wrong. The ultimatum was not delivered until after the attack.

>>2146300
Failure of the Phillipines?

>>2146378
>>2146238
Negotiations were over as soon as America said trade would not begin again until Japan pulled out of China.

>>2146875
And yet, they continued anyway until the 7th of December.

>>2146866
Probably means the extensive defeat America suffered there.

>>2146866
like the other guy, the way it was basically the vietnam of its era where the american public couldn't stomach the level of tenacity and harshness that would be required to keep it, I thought maybe the japs saw this as an indication that america was weak.

>>2145816
>we blow up their fleet in the harbor and they'll surely sue for peace
No, their goal was to cripple the American fleet long enough to consolidate their holding in the Western Pacific so that when it came time for peace talks they could hold onto their sphere of influence while still giving America something it wanted. The Japanese admiralty was fully aware that it couldn't beat the USN in the long game.

>>2146893
>Probably means the extensive defeat America suffered there.
Doesn't really make sense since we are talking about why the Axis thought so lowly of the US.
>Did the Axis invade the Philippines because of America's failure to defend the Philippines against the Axis?

>>2146906
I'm actually interested in America in the Philippines and the American perception of the US occupation there. I don't know much about it beyond the fact of how America got there and the fact that there were concentration camps.

>>2145625
>STARVE US OF OIL, FILTHY WHITE PIGGU
>I THINK NOT-ARU

>>2145625
That's the problem OP,
they weren't

>>2146927
Well, it's the only thing that makes sense. The US had a good grip on the Philippines by the mid-30s, and was well on the way to voluntarily giving them freedom. They'd already gotten home rule and their own military, so unless someone defines "failure" as giving your colony freedom, the failure of the defense has to be what they're talking about.

>>2145816
Why are there so many retards on this board that puppet this meme?

Pearl harbor was the only rational battle they took during ww2, hoping to disable most of the American fleet.

The rest were them trying to survive until the nazis won.

I am amazed how people can lurk a hostory board for this long and still be retarded. Goes to show how useless time can be if you dont spend it well.

>>2147159

>The rest were them trying to survive until the nazis won.

So does that mean they were completely unaware of the fact that Germany was losing just as bad as they were?

>>2147159
>the only rational battle they took during ww2

Sinking 3 obsolete ships and failing to inflict any damage to Pearl Harbor's infrastructure that would actually had forced yanks to delay their operations on Pacific make that raid a solid failure in my books.

>>2147159
>Pearl harbor was the only rational battle they took during ww2, hoping to disable most of the American fleet.
But their central doctrine still revolved around the "Grand Battle" theory. Attacking (and succeeding) at Pearl Harbor invalidated all of their prewar naval planning.

>>2147219
Basically if Japs had wanted to have win they should had let US to declare the war and then try to lure the Pacific fleet near the Philippines and engage it there and hope for Tsushima 2.0, of course USN was aware that doing so would end up in their defeat so even then a Japanese victory would had been near impossible.

>>2145857
Because the USA was going to enter the war soon anyway, but speeding it up let the Germans do this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Happy_Time

The USN and IJN traded ship casualties at a ratio of 1:2.5, just fyi. You MIGHT be able shrink that to near 2:1 if you threw in British and other losses.

http://forum.worldofwarships.com/index.php?/topic/37877-losses-accumulated-in-the-pacific-theater-by-the-usn-and-ijn/

>>2147276
And even if you did, the USN could replace those losses. The Japanese could not. They built like a total of two new cruisers after the commencement of hostilities while America built somewhere north of 20-30.

>>2146081
>implying Hitler himself doesn't regard America his greatest long term threat (the USSR takes #2) in Zweites Buch

The only reason he declared war was because he had little in the way of alternative options. After Moscow, any quick victory to the war wasn't in the cards in the first place. Hitler hyped himself on his total war nonsense so hard that he led his country into this mess, and there was no point trying to contain it by 1942. Maybe he hoped the Japanese would serve sufficient distraction to the Americans, maybe he hoped Fortress Europe would hold and he'd only have to worry about the Soviets as a serious threat for the foreseeable future.

>>2147331
*by 41 fewfwef

>>2145972
Spot on

>>2147295
Japanese industries were woefully unprepared for a war against any nation that wasn't either already crippled or busy dealing with other enemies.