Remember Pearl Harbor

[August]

Annual salute to our honored dead. May they rest in peace.

[Dread Knot]

Salute!

[BossMark]

[Kptlt. Neuerburg]

Never forget.

[Jimbuna]

A date I'll never forget for two reasons...it is also the date of my fathers passing.

RIP to them all.

[fireftr18]

[u crank]

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

A date I'll never forget for two reasons...it is also the date of my fathers passing.

My daughter's birthday.

To the fallen, R.I.P.

[TarJak]

to all who served.

[August]

Loosing our carriers at Pearl would mean the Japanese likely capture Port Moresby and Midway Island. That would have been a major blow to our war effort.

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by August

Loosing our carriers at Pearl would mean the Japanese likely capture Port Moresby and Midway Island. That would have been a major blow to our war effort.

Good to see someone following up on my theory

[Admiral Von Gerlach]

It seems fitting to post this thread for a wonderful home movie of the victory day in Honolulu on Hotel Street, vets will know that name...and it is marvelous to see actual images of people of that time, the oridinary people who fought the war.

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=CZ85j6U2Fvs

[August]

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

Good to see someone following up on my theory

Yep, Japanese Land based bombers in Port Moresby threatens Northern Australia and from Midway they can hit the Hawaiian islands. And that's just the offensives they tried with the American carriers still afloat. Imagine how bold the Japanese would have been if they were all sitting on the bottom of Pearl Harbor along with our battlewagons.

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by Admiral Von Gerlach

It seems fitting to post this thread for a wonderful home movie of the victory day in Honolulu on Hotel Street, vets will know that name...and it is marvelous to see actual images of people of that time, the oridinary people who fought the war.

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=CZ85j6U2Fvs

Great link

Originally Posted by August

Yep, Japanese Land based bombers in Port Moresby threatens Northern Australia and from Midway they can hit the Hawaiian islands. And that's just the offensives they tried with the American carriers still afloat. Imagine how bold the Japanese would have been if they were all sitting on the bottom of Pearl Harbor along with our battlewagons.

Rgr that.

[Dread Knot]

Originally Posted by August

and from Midway they can hit the Hawaiian islands.

I think Midway in Japanese hands would have made for a lousy advanced base. It is less than three square miles of land, had zero fresh water, is possessed of only a relatively small harbor, and has room for but one small airfield. At best it could operate an air contingent of about 90-100 aircraft. In other words, there was absolutely no chance of using Midway as the sort of major logistics center (think Truk or Rabaul) for further operations down the Hawaiian chain. Midway was, at best, an outpost.

Second, Midway is too far from Hawaii. Even if the Japanese had been able to install an airgroup at Midway, and keep it supplied, it had no chance of exerting a powerful influence on Hawaii, since it is nearly 1,300 miles from Oahu. During the later Solomons campaign, the Japanese (who had the longest-ranged fighter in the Pacific in the A6M5 Zero) found it nearly impossible to exert air power from Rabaul to Guadalcanal, which was 650 miles away. If seized by the Japanese it likely would have shared the fate of that other US outpost, Wake Island. Isolated and bypassed by war's end with a starving garrison. Even Nimitz didn't use Midway as a base in his Central Pacific Offensive. He usually staged out of Pearl harbor.

Later in the war the US was able to build up Midway into a respectable submarine fueling depot, but only by investing the sort of heavy engineering resources, (bulldozers, dredgers, steamshovels ) that Japan always sorely lacked.