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Originally Posted by kverdon
I have to agree that a third raid on Pearl Harbor would have been beneficial to the Japanese effort. However, though able to do a fair amount of damage, the carrier aircraft lacked the ability to permantently destroy the facilities IMHO. A carrier Air wing carried a far less bomb load than a few B-17's. Yes, blowing up the drydocks and oil facilities would have been good but they would have been repaired in short order. Japan did not have the resources, even if they took Midway, to conduct exetended opperations off Pearl Harbor. One also has to remember that the much of fleet that destroyed the Japanese in 1943-1944 was already ordered or being built by the time of Pearl Harbor. Had the Japanese destroyed the carriers that should have been in Pearl, won Coral Sea and Midway AND not lost a single Carrier, they still would have been blown away by the Armada that sallied forth in 1943-44.
Kevin
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One thing that you aren't considering is that the Japanese failed to destroy 140 million gallons of fuel sitting out in the open in tank farms.
That fuel would have been easy to destroy, and *VERY* hard to replace. It fueled the war in the Pacific on the American side for several months. If you take that out of the equation, then you have to bring tankers full of fuel to support the Navy at Pearl, or withdraw your fleet to the West Coast. Either way, you are going to have some major logistical nightmares.
It's actually kind of suprising that they Japanese didn't think to take that out in the first wave.