point to ponder, if the USA would have studied more on carrier warfare, maybe the pacific island hopping......

Question

campaingn in WW2 wouldnt have been nescessary, because many Marines died during this period. another point to ponder, the japanese used carrier warfare on pearl harbor. how many of u agree?

Answer 1

Marine deaths occurred on operations carried out within the Central Pacific

Answer 2

It was Carrier Warfare that made the Island Hopping possible. Even Japan recognized the USA was Carrier Ready. When they hit Pearl Harbor they were looking for the Carriers. That is what their attack was all about. Destroy a superior Carrier Force. But the Carriers were not in Port when the Japs attacked so they went to the Battle Ships and Cruisers as their alternate targets. Less than six months later the USA totally decimated the Jap Carrier Force at Midway thus opening the way for the Island Hopping. Without a carrier force to control the skies the Japs were unable to stop the Island Hopping.

Answer 3

The arguments for a surprise attack on the American fleet were strong ones, for basically there was a disparity in numbers of modern battleships between the United States and the Japanese Navies. To Admiral Yamamoto a reduction in American strength wasessential to put the two surface fleets on an equal footing. The clinching argument was for the need to keep the war short, thus preventing the United States from mobilizing her industrial might.

Nor had the successful British attack by torpedo bombers on the Italian fleet in Taranto harbour gone unnoticed to the Japanese planners. In fact it put the finishing touches to the long maturing plans for dealing with the American Pacific Fleet.

As everyone now knows the attack on the United States Fleet based at Pearl Harbor on the 7th of December 1941 was a devastating success. Ninety Japanese Carrier-Bornne 'Kate' bombers of the first wave caught the Americans completely by surprise, and the US Battleships were rapidly put out of action. The USS Arizona blew up, the Oklahoma capsized, and the California and West Virginia sunk in shallow water. The USS Nevada, Maryland, Tennessee and Pennsylvania were all damaged to a greater or lesser degree.

A second strike by eighty-one Aichi Dive-bombers fell on the nearby airstrips destroying numerous aircraft on the ground and causing a considerable number of casualties. A third air strike might have inflicted further damage on the ships and instalations but the Japanese commander, Vice Admiral Nagumo, was satisfied with the damage already caused to the American Base and decided to cancel the planned third strike. The Japanese had lost just twenty-nine aircraft.

Without a Battleship fleet the Americans would, for the time being, be forced to rely on their aircraft carriers for any operations against the Japanese Navy. An arm in which numerically the Japanese held the advantage.

The idea of utilising the Aircraft Carrier as the basis for offensive action was one that had been considered by the US Navy but had never been implemented as an official doctrine. It is to their credit that, within a few months, the US Navy had learnt the new form of warfare and had suceeded in turning it against their treacherous enemy.

Answer 4

A. We didn't have the carrier fleet we have now. B. It was strategically important to "own" the airstrips on the islands... as a defensive tactic. If we owned them, then the Japanese didn't... which decreased the vulnerability of the carriers we DID have.. C. The fuel capacity and range of the fighters we were using then was much less than those we use today. By having airfields on islands AND carriers positioned in the Pacific, we had much better mobility than we would have had using carriers alone.

Answer 5

It could, I suppose, be argued that some of the amphibious operations carried out by the U.S. military during World War II were unnecessary. But there can't be any denying that, from the perspective of the army and navy alike, a considerable number of the islands held by Japan had to be taken.

Since the mid-1920s, the Joint Army-Navy Basic War Plan Orange (the plan that laid out the military's basic strategy in the event of war with Japan) had argued that any campaign against Japan in the western Pacific would have to be conducted in a series of stages. Because of limitations on the cruising range of vessels of the era, the navy would have to secure forward staging bases that could serve as repair and resupply stations before the next stage of the campaign could be carried out.

And of course at some point it was going to be necessary to secure bases from which Army bombers could conduct airstrikes against the Japanese home islands. World War II era carrier aircraft were fantastic for their intended role (i.e., attacks upon enemy vessels, fleet defense, or tactical support of amphibious operations). However, because carriers couldn't launch and recover anything larger than single-engine aircraft, they couldn't match the payload capability of Army level bombers such as the B-17, B-24 or (especially) the B-29. When the war had progressed to the point where the U.S. wanted to begin large-scale attacks upon Japan's warmaking infrastructure, single-engine carrier aircraft would have been very inefficient.

Additionally, of course, carrier task forces throughout the war could only "loiter" on a combat station for a given period of time before having to withdraw, a problem that an island base didn't have. Lastly, bringing the large carrier task forces within striking range of the home islands in the later stages of the war exposed them to mass kamikaze attacks.

I think the U.S. learned the lessons of carrier warfare at least as well as the Japanese did--after Pearl Harbor, the navy had little choice, since the carriers were the only major combatants the Pacific Fleet had at its disposal. Despite the Pearl Harbor raid, the Japanese seem to have clung to the notion that the war would be decided by a massive surface clash between battle fleets far longer than did the Americans.

Answer 6

Most of the Marine deaths occurred on operations carried out within the Central Pacific Command, under Admiral Chester Nimitz. Same for Army casualties. However, for all his ego-drive faults, General MacArthur (the Southwest Pacific Commander) used tactics where aerial and naval bombardment reduced the enemy forces ashore to less than 50% combat effectiveness. Then, and only then, did American troops land and move to contact. MacArthur also followed a strategy of bypassing certain Japanese-held islands, doing an end run around them and cutting off their LOCs and supply train, leaving them to languish. A good example was Rabaul.
Another factor which added to the death toll in the Corps had to do with the fact that they took on entrenched Japanese troops on Japanese soil (Iwo Jima, Saipan and Okinawa).

Answer 7

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was a superb example of what carrier based aircraft could do. Since that attack destroyed a great deal of the U.S Navy's Pacific capital ships, the Navy was forced to utilize carriers. They developed excellent carrier based tactics, i.e. Midway, Leyte Gulf, etc.

The island hopping was going to be necessary to defeat the Japaneses Empire. At some point in all wars to date, boots are on the ground, in the mud, or in the sand. There's no substitute for it.