Could the japanese have won at Midway?

>>3281382
I'm sure you've already thought of some ridiculous scenario where they did so fill us in on how they did it.

>>3281391
I did not because I lack the knowledge on this subject thus I asked whether they could've won or not. Is everyone on this board as smug as you are?

>>3281401
Only if they're french or leftist or both

>>3281382
Most probably not. From the one book I read where it's mentioned it seemed more like a last chance Japan ever had, but even if they did win there, US was already in the process of building up their fleet and whatever ships they would have lost would be relatively quickly replaced, so in a sense, it doesn't even matter if they could win it. Though as I said, that book didn't focus only on that battle so I don't know that much details about it

>>3281382
They could had, it wouldn't had matered in a long run though. USA was already mass-producing carriers superior to anything nips had (or would end up producing in otl) and the first patch of them would enter to service in less than a year.

>>3281436
Yamamoto's strategy was to make the war as costly and bloody for the Americans as possible with a string of major victories to force the American populace to quickly make the government sue for terms.

>>3281477
Well that wouldn't have worked since it's fairly plausible that Japan didn't really want a war against the US in the first place and that the Pearl Harbour was a pre-emptive strike, motivated by the fear of US declaring the war first. America was geared up for war, regardless of the isolationist movement

>>3281436
what book?

>>3281583
Some old Yugoslav professor, he did a series of books on naval warfare. Unsure about his sources though. Not saying they were sketchy sources, just don't know what they were.

Did Japan really ever have a chance if winning at all?

Could they have at least kept what they had taken at that point had the Pearl Harbor attack destroyed a significant number of American ships?

>>3281600
>Did Japan really ever have a chance if winning at all?
Not the way they fought the war; their whole plan was to fight something that the Americans wouldn't have the stomach to pay the blood and treasure involved to break them down. But by the sneak attack that they did, they turned U.S. public opinion so badly against them that peace short of their destruction was pretty impossible.

>Could they have at least kept what they had taken at that point had the Pearl Harbor attack destroyed a significant number of American ships?
Nah. The U.S. had 7 fleet carriers before the war started (most of them nowhere near Pearl Harbor), they would go on to build 14 during the war, and that's not counting things like light carriers or jeep carriers, or submarines, or land based planes, or all the other fun things the U.S. turned out tons of. And it's not like the U.S. lacked for shipyard capacity either, if push came to shove, they could turn out more hulls, at the cost of other stuff.

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>>3281382
No, and they would be just as fucked even if they did.