This new stand alone release based on the legendary War in the Pacific from 2 by 3 Games adds significant improvements and changes to enhance game play, improve realism, and increase historical accuracy. With dozens of new features, new art, and engine improvements, War in the Pacific: Admiral's Edition brings you the most realistic and immersive WWII Pacific Theater wargame ever!
From my experience in game of a second day Dec 8 strike where PH was emptied, the remaining ships sortied and sent hunting, and lots of planes in the air attacking, it might have been lights out for the IJN if someone had the time and guts to send out the fleet toward the KB. The US CVs might have been called back and at least Enterprise getting close to Hawaii as well.
Even though it was only 7 hours difference in time, early morning patrols would have gone out, been more 'on edge,' (maybe even seen the strikes in the air coming in) and if the KB was sighted (especially if the Japanese did not see the shadowing plane) the entire fleet could have had a chance to wake up and get moving as the attacks rolled in. The CAP and flak would have reduced effectiveness of the strikes and maybe the second wave especially wouldn't have been even close to as effective.
Imagine 20 DDs, 4-5 cruisers and 4-5 BBs leaving Pearl at mid-day and going hunting. It's a long trip back to Japan.
This scenario was war gamed repeatedly, most recently on History Channel. It was shown pretty conclusively that a sortie would have resulted in the complete annihilation of the Pacific fleet. As it was, several ships, though badly damaged, were repaired & brought back into service.
Interesting. Was it war-gamed assuming a 7-8 hour advance notice of war?
"Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm." - Winston Churchill
Correct, it was assumed that Japan had delivered it's declaration of hostilities earlier than actually occurred. Not exactly as mentioned here, but the alert was several hours ahead of the strike.
good points Hans but I am not really talking about the game so much as what they would really have done 7 hrs after the attack in the Philippines ,I think they still would have been very slow to get up to speed...and not as ready as some would think.
but it is a Question with no real answer.
Tigercub
At a minimum the radar hit that detected the incoming raid would not have been so easily ignored, so I think a good percentage of the fighters would have gotten airborne as it was about an hour out when it was detected. I also doubt the first wave would have been able to get to within striking distance with no allied flak coming up to meet them, so their accuracy would have been affected and a lot more planes would have been downed, probably at least double the 50 or so they historically lost perhaps more.
Remember the first wave saw very little flak and when the second arrived a lot of the ships were in serious trouble, so their flak was probably not very effective and still Japan lost 50 or so. Imagine how bad it would be if every single ship was at close to 100% effectiveness, Japan's planes would have suffered very heavily compared to the total surprise loss of just 50.
I doubt much of the heavy ships in the US fleet would have been at sea yet, but a large percentage of their crews would have been recalled from shore leave as soon as news of the attack in the Philippines had been heard and their alert status would have been on a war footing. Some of the heavy ships may have been able to get underway before the strikes actually arrived, but they'd still be in very close to Pearl and vulnerable to attack I think. In fact with all of Peal's AAA firing I bet any ships a little ways out to sea would have attracted a lot of attention as flak would be less the further away from the shore based batteries they were.
I don't think the heavies were as stationary as some of you are suggesting.
Nevada was able to get underway within minutes of the first attack. She was making good headway getting out of the channel, but was ordered to beach after she was holed and attacked. Certainly Nevada and escorts could have escaped Pearl and scattered / fled SE to avoid the initial attack.
Given 24 hours notice, are you telling me that none of the other BBs in battleship row could have brought up enough power to get underway? That ALL of the other BBs were in hibernation and that, on a near-war footing, they couldn't turn on boilers to get underway in a day? I'm afraid I find that hard to believe.
Pennsylvania and the other drydocked ships would have been tough to get out in time, but I still argue that the majority of the berthed heavies and support would have cleared the harbor or at least COULD have cleared the harbor in egress.
1. CIC manned and responsive.
2. Search Planes possibly sent out that morning, question is in what direction did they search, south and west or North West?
3. Water tight integrity in many of the Battleships would have been improved, especially USS California which had bilge inspection plates removed for Admiral's inspection.
4. AA fire would have been more intense, not sure how fast army would have deployed AA around Pearl Harbor since they were in charge of the defense of the port and island.
5. Aircraft armed and fueled and better dispersed. Hopefully on Cap and responding to CIC instructions. Will never know for sure if we have a repeat of the Philippines or a ready and waiting force.
6. Not sure if the US Carriers would be impacted since they were already acting on a war footing and Enterprise was already supposed to be in port and weather was holding her up.
Just a couple of thoughts. Definitely would have exacted a price on the attackers, Maybe they would have held back the second wave as at Midway and headed back sooner.
Independent of what would happen if the Japanese would have attacked somewhere else first, what sense would that make?
"Hey, we start a war and want to take on the most dangerous place we could think of in the Pacific and what we need the most is surprise. Heck, lets start the fighting somewhere else first!"
A big factor in the huge success at Pearl Harbour was surprise and I just can't see a reason to give it up.
I don't think the heavies were as stationary as some of you are suggesting.
Nevada was able to get underway within minutes of the first attack. She was making good headway getting out of the channel, but was ordered to beach after she was holed and attacked. Certainly Nevada and escorts could have escaped Pearl and scattered / fled SE to avoid the initial attack.
Given 24 hours notice, are you telling me that none of the other BBs in battleship row could have brought up enough power to get underway? That ALL of the other BBs were in hibernation and that, on a near-war footing, they couldn't turn on boilers to get underway in a day? I'm afraid I find that hard to believe.
Pennsylvania and the other drydocked ships would have been tough to get out in time, but I still argue that the majority of the berthed heavies and support would have cleared the harbor or at least COULD have cleared the harbor in egress.
I wonder if pre warning would have actually meant the Pacific fleet fleeing rather than trying to take on the Japanese which would have probably been worse (for the USN) and better for the IJN. There were few ppl thinking about what carriers can do PRE Pearl Harbour.
I think being in port with many sailors offboard was far better than being alerted and the fleet on sortie against the Japanese to be caught at Sea. The "best" it could have been for the USN would have been being alerted, the ships ready for the attack but not leaving Hawaii. Still losses within the USN but bloody as hell to the IJNAF in return. How could it have looked like? Three or four times the losses in aircraft and only halve the losses in US BB?
Big question would of course have been what would the USN carriers do, as others have mentioned already.
A lot of the ships at dock had auxiliary hatches open for fresh air that were not open when on sea duty. In the press to come to action stations most were probably still open when the bombs rained down.
When at peace, it takes a while to wake up forces and get on a war footing. Especially a large country like the US. The u-boats had a field day for over a month after the war started within sight of land on the US East Coast. They used the lights from US coastal cities that were still lit up like peacetime to hunt ships going up the coast. When a shadow blotted out the lights, they fired.
US ASW was slow to respond to the threat. That went on for almost two months and only ceased because Doenitz got nervous and pulled the u-boats back.
The powers that be did not believe Pearl Harbor was at risk from air attack. Short especially was far more concerned about sabotage than air attack. That's why all the planes were grouped together. Joseph Reeves was the US's first carrier admiral. He pioneered carriers working together as a unit and he conducted two mock air raids on Pearl Harbor at two different times showing that Pearl was vulnerable to air attack.
Reeves was retired by 1941, but while the US was beginning to forget his lessons, the Japanese were students of it. Reeves never had more than 3 carriers to work with, but the Japanese trained for all 6 of their CVs to work as a single unit. The US never expected that anyone would do that.
Look at the timeline for other surprise attacks. Even in the modern era with instant communication around the globe, most countries are slow to react outside of the immediate attack zone. In WW II the Philippines were attacked many hours after Pearl Harbor and the Japanese were able to pretty much destroy most naval facilities in the PI and destroy most aircraft on the ground. The US did put most aircraft into the air when they heard about Pearl, but there was no planning of CAP and all the fighters were on the ground refueling when the Japanese showed up. Nobody thought to disperse the bombers to other fields less likely to be attacked in the first wave.
As a result, a lot of aircraft and support facilities were destroyed in the first attack.
And that was in a location that knew it was on the front line in the event of war. Pearl Harbor had much less reason to believe it was under any threat. If the PI had been attacked hours before Pearl, they would have been out recalling liberty, and would be getting the battleships ready to go, but they would be thinking in terms of many days rather than hours. Facilities probably would have been on a slightly higher alert level, but nothing like a full war footing.
The majority of humans think very locally. War on the other side of the world is a remote thing and most people aren't going to think it could happen here. In the first months of WWII the US government commissioned a bunch of films to tell the public why we were at war. They were propaganda to some degree (I've seen a couple of them), but they drove home the reality that the US was at war. A type of war that would require everyone's contribution.
On the morning of Dec 7, 1941, the sailors of the Pacific Fleet and the soldiers of the Hawaiian department would be waking up figuring that they had some tough fighting in the months ahead, quite possibly in and around the Philippines. Very few would be thinking that bombs could be falling on their heads that day. Even the top brass in the islands would have been little concerned about air attack.
Reports from the PI probably would have lulled the US into thinking the KB was around the PI. The first air attacks were escorted by Zeroes, which at that time were barely known to US intelligence (which was far more amateurish than it became in the next year). Nobody thought that the Japanese had any fighter with the range to escort bombers all the way from Formosa to the PI and back. They would have assumed that all the fighters were coming from carriers in the area.
The ships at Pearl would have been stirring to life, planning on leaving within days, not hours. Mostly to get the crews thinking about war footing, a few captains and a few NCOs would have taken upon themselves to have AA guns manned and ammo broken out, but it would have been local initiative rather than a fleet wide order. Similarly, the army would have been flying a few CAP aircraft during daylight hours mostly to let people on the ground know they were there.
Japanese losses would probably have been a little higher due to a slight step up in security at Pearl, but I think the attack would have largely gone as it did. The US was preparing for war in December 1941, but the idea hadn't percolated down much by then. Peacetime habits are hard to give up, even in the military. Because of PH, the US military reacts a lot faster now to threats, but back then the US had never had a surprise attack. The last time a foreign enemy had attacked was 1812, 130 years earlier. The concept that the US was vulnerable anywhere took a while and a hard lesson to sink in.
The US had a very different attitude about war and it's place in the world in 1941. Probably nobody on this forum has ever experienced that US. After WW II the US never returned to that mindset.
They would have worked up steam and sailed out to meet the enemy. And all of those old BBs would have gone to the deep bottom rather than sink in the shallow mud where they could at least been salvaged. One day's notice would not have made the American Pacific fleet a more ready or efficient fighting force. It took them six months to learn that.
IIRC KB lost 29 a/c outright during the attack and 77 of those that made it back to KB were write-offs due to battle damage. That is around 30% losses for that single "total" surprise attack due solely to flak and the 10 or so CAP planes that got aloft. Given that production of replacement attack aircraft (Vals and Kates) had been severely cut due to the "imminent start-up" of the newer models (Judys and Jills) any greater loss might have proved a bigger disaster for IJ than the extended (temporary) loss of old BBs was for the US..
Did the fighter pilots of the KB actually demonstrate the kind of superiority in A2A combat on that day against those American planes that actually got aloft that would have prevented an even higher loss rate than the 30% actually sustained. Irrespective of that the flak would have been murderous if the guns had been manned and provided with ammunition. As it was the approach used by the torpedo bombers was terribly constrained by the geography of the harbor. No surprise, low altitude and heavy flak along a narrow approach lane would in all likelihood have resulted in significantly fewer torpedo hits (IRL = 50%). Combined with a nearly 60% dud rate (or low order detonation) for the 800kg bombs it seems unlikely that the Pacific Battlefleet would have been put so completely out of action.
Given 12 hours warning (a late daylight attack in the PI), a coherent and effective counterattack by the US forces was unlikely I would guess. But buttoning down open hatches, manning the AA guns, flying "the dawn patrol" with all other aircraft on alert and dispersed were easily implemented by troops which had been practicing those very things in the months prior. Once the war had "really" begun in the PI planning on surprise at Pearl Harbor would have been delusional.
IMHO the real question is why the Japanese should have announced their main attack striking elsewhere? Pearl Harbour attack has no reasons to exists but by surprise. In short, I agree with you your question is without answers because that scenario is unrealistic. The Japanese should have strike in the PI on December 6th but they would haven't send the KB to PH in this scenario. Where the KB could have be sent is an interesting question IMHO
Even if the ships remained in port the AA fire would've reduced the effectiveness of the attack. The US forces had just come off of prolonged exercises and many planes were undergoing overhauls, many had their MGs removed. Many AA guns were removed from their combat positions to rest areas. I think 7 hours notice would've made a difference, but how much is just conjecture.
The main points I can see if there was a 12 hour warning of attack are;
# If the Battleships remained in port, they would have been closed-up, and powered-up. Meaning that their was less chance of sinking, plus all there ammunition hoists and gun directors would have been working.
# If the Battleships would have sortied, there was a very slim chance of intercepting the Japanese force overnight. The outcome would have been more likely be, that most of them being sunk in deep water.
# It is not likely that the USN would have dispersed it's battle-fleet, as the power of the KB was not fully understood at this time.
# Halsey would almost certainly have been back in the vicinity of PH, and because of his nature would have closed and attacked the KB. With the predictable result of the loss of one CV, and very little chance of doing any significant damage to the enemy.
When you see the Southern Cross, For the first time
You understand now, Why you came this way
I really like wdolson's comments. The US military planners just did not take seriously an air attack at the time. Many were war gaming and preparing for an amphibious landing at Hawaii. The fact that they did not understand the possibility and the stated scenario of an attack in the PI would have fulfilled their exactions. The US would expected that all the enemy forces were in the PI and began preparing to execute the prepared for surge across the Central Pacific to relieve the PI. I really doubt that given the preparedness level of the US forces at the time they would have reacted within 7', 12 or 24 hours for the mad dash. They would have taken sometime to get going for all the reasons people have stated.
I have been reading At Dawn We Slept, an excellent in depth examination of the run up to the attack from both sides point of view. I am not done yet, but I highly recommend it. It is really hard for us to imagine the realities and attitudes of the day in our instant information and voluminous age. The book does a good job of putting you in the proper frame of reference to understand what was happening at the time as well as the larger context of the world in which these events were occurring.
