ORIGINAL: ChezDaJez
And I think mdiehl might want to research exactly what the letters "AOCS" in sandman455's sig line means.
Chez
Reminds me a bit of stories my SO have been telling me. She is both a Psychologist and an attorney (just a bit of an over achiever [:D]). She's been working in this counseling agency for the last year for an idiot who thinks he knows everything. In staff meetings he will make pronouncements about the law and when she says she has researched it and the law actually doesn't say that at all, he tells her she's flat out wrong. Everyone knows she's a practicing attorney. I wonder what the rest of the staff is thinking when he (with no law degree) is telling an attorney she's wrong about something she works with every day.
Lately he's also been doing some video editing with another counselor who used to have a music and video business and is an expert in audio and video production. He has told my SO that the bozo has been doing the same thing with the video editing.
I don't claim to be an expert on petroleum, but my sister is a petroleum geologist and I have a friend who is a geophysicist in the oil biz. I've picked a bit from them over the years. I do know that once you get the stuff burning, it's usually pretty tough to put out.
I don't know what the viscosity was of the fuel stored at Pearl. Some of it was av gas, which would have burned quite easily. Bunker sea it tougher to get burning, but I would not be surprised if vapor pressure builds up in those tanks. The sun does beat down on them all day which would make them fairly warm inside. The attack did happen early in the morning in December, but Hawaii is not known for cold nights.
Some kind of fire source like an incendiary bomb would probably work better than HE to get the tanks going, but that was not unknown technology in 1941. I believe the RAF was using them by that point. The IJN fashioned AP bombs for the attack from battleship shells, even if they didn't have incendiaries normally on the KB, they could have devised something for the raid.
But again, nobody was thinking about the tank farm in 1941 on either side. Taking out logistics is not the Japanese style of combat. And it may have made delayed the offensive a little, but not dramatically. We also can't know for sure how fast the tanks could have been replaced if that had gone up. The US did show amazing initiative when needed during that time. Replacing the tanks may have delayed some west coast ship building, and replacing the fuel lost would have diverted some fuel destined for the South Pacific and Australia which would have delayed operations there. But overall, it would only have bought 6 months at the outside.
The American strategy was to focus most resources on the Pacific until Japan's advance was checked, then to switch to Europe. More resources may have been diverted to the Pacific in 1942, which may have resulted in a very similar outcome.
As you said, all roads lead to failure for Japan. No matter how you slice it.
Bill
