In this timeline a passing American sub sights the Japanese task force and gets off a warning in time for the US fleet to sortie on the night of December 6. The Japanese strike arrives to a swarm of fighters an an empty Battleship Row. The first wave is badly mauled; the second wave fares worse.
Back out at sea, planes from the Enterprise attack the Japanese fleet but the inexperienced pilots are unable to hit anything; a flight of B17s from Pearl Harbor fails to find the enemy at all.
In late morning, the US fleet finds the enemy carriers just as the Japanese planes are returning, out of ordinance and low on fuel. The two battleships and two cruisers of the Japanese escort sacrifice themselves nobly against the ten American battleships and accompanying cruisers. The carriers flee, but their planes arrive at the designated rendezvous point to see the carriers disappearing over the horizon. They have to ditch and almost all are lost save for a few crews picked up by American ships.
The sun sets on December 7 with Japanese naval aviation virtually annihilated, American aviation having played no part in the battle at sea, and battleships still ruling the waves.
What happens next?
So just to be clear, you are proposing an alternate history in which Japan is weaker after pearl harbour, and the US is stronger? And the Americans are still pissed at about a surprise attack (if maybe less pissed)?
You make a scenario where the US thinks battleships are cool, but Japan probably also thinks maybe carriers are not that great, plus all their good pilots just ditched in the water, so it's not like their carrier wings are any good anyways.
Japan still loses, just harder. Best case, their abject failure at pearl harbour convinces them "oops" before getting two cities glassed and a bunch more burned to the ground. Probably not though, it's Japan.
theres the other important detail, the sub on spotting patrol, if the us went hard into "SUBs are for spotting aircraft" nonsense, that would geuninely be a big improvement for the japanese. unlikely that the us would have gone that way, but it was clearly a possible view (see japanese use of subs)
Yes, basically both sides figure air power isn't all it's cracked up to be, at least at first. Eventually somebody figures it out, but maybe Prince of Wales and Repulse don't get sunk because the Japanese are afraid to attack them from the air?
The British basically sunk the Battleship Bismarck with carrier launched biplanes seven months earlier. I don’t think anyone would underestimate air power.
Also the Swordfish raid on Taranto dealt a huge blow to the Italian Navy. There's speculation that the Japanese were inspired by Taranto's success.
The invasions of the Philippines and Singapore started on functionally the same day as Pearl Harbor. The International Date Line tends to make it complicated.
Air attacks on naval assets were still a better option than no attack at zll, or a naval on navsl action, even if the air attack gets wiped out. It does not take hhat long to replace a hundred aircraft, but a battleship takes years to produce.
Even if the air attack on Prince of Wales and Repulse didn't sink them, damaging them was still a mission kill. All the repair facilities were under direct attack in Singapore.
Force Z is being attacked within a day of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese wouldn’t have even known about the failure in all likelihood simply because their isn’t enough time for the information to trickle down.
Also people already know AirPower is a thing, the British had been using it successfully in the Atlantic and Mediterranean for years at this point
If the first wave finds PH empty the second wave will not happen.
IIRC there was only a 45 minute gap between first and second waves so the second wave would have already taken off before the first wave arrived over the target.
If the first wave arrives over Pearl and its empty Fuchida would not have sent his infamous “tora tora tora” signal (the signal that the anchorage was full and suprise had been achieved) and the second wave would have been diverted away from the harbor.
Also how do you imagine the American battleships catching the Japanese in the first place? The Battleships at Pearl were all of the Standard Classes with the fastest only capable of 22 knots. All of the Japanese ships can make 30 knots or more in speed so could easily disengage long before the Americans even reached gun range.
Some of those battleships would struggle to make 20 knots
Really bad weather would be an explanation. Bad weather would have interfered with the carrier operations though, so the attack might have been delayed.
But bad weather delays the attack and also limits the ability of the Americans to find the Japanese in the first place so not really a plausible explanation either.
I think the morning of 7 December 1941 broke with glorious sunshine and light winds over the Hawaiian islands.
This is putting a little too much stock in the idea that Pearl Harbor completely changed the Navy’s thinking of naval warfare.
We had carrier fleets already and the western allies were already aware of the power of naval aviation. Taranto was an excellent case study a year prior. The US tested Test B in the 20’s and were aware the dangers to battleships posed by aircraft.
The biggest change here is that someone like Halsey is more emboldened to be aggressive and punch back hard. Guadalcanal would have more cruisers and battleships tossed at it. I don’t think it changes much of the navy’s thinking but we would be willing to be more aggressive earlier.
Just look at the numbers of carriers the US ordered BEFORE the war. They knew the BB was over but where afraid to let them go all the way.
they ordered 8 new Essexes in 1940 as new ships.
and only 7 BB as replacements for older standard types
Kido Butai can just steam away from the battle line, there’s no chance they catch it. Honestly the battle line being at sea is almost worse than being alongside, because when they sink, they’re gone.
The US Battleship fleet is much so slow to catch the japanese Fleet.
Also do you know how long it takes a US BB of that era to make Steam?
From Cold in harbor to sailing at flank speed you need even taking a lot of risks at least 8-12 hours.
Normal would be even longer and you can expect them to need 18-24 hours from harbor totally cold to full power.
They can start moving slowly after a round 4 hours in a emergency but thats far from flank power.
I'll just add that this is why it was such a big deal that Nevada got underway.
she wasnt Cold but had Boilers running. Not all but some
You're right, but it was an intentional decision to do so, which allowed her to leave her berth.
This is unrealistic. As the Japanese were not expecting an American attack, they would have had no CAP, Japanese anti-aircraft fire control tactics were twenty years out of date. Those carriers would have been easy targets for the SBDs. The Americans actually were pretty good at using dive bombers. The SBD and even the early versions of the SB2C were far better than the Junkers 87 and somewhat better than the Aichi "Val".
Even if you go with Original Poster's scenario, it will not change tactics much. If nothing else, it will be obvious to the American High Command that the four Japanese capital ships were covering the carrier retreat/flight. This would not be difficult as the American battleships were slow. Add to this that the Japanese were far better at gunnery duels in the early part of the war. The Americans would have had to keep Japanese cruisers and destroyers at bay lest they get hit with torpedoes.
Still, all sides were expecting gunnery duels but that does not necessarily obviate the carriers' having the larger role.
Historically the Japanese did have a CAP in the air over the carriers on December 7th so likely the a enterprise and planes from Pearl get jumped in a similar fashion to Coral Sea and Midway
Especially if the anchorage is empty. 2nd wave is aborted but some of the zeros might be kept up to beef up the CAP.
It might have been worse for us because the attack would have hit stuff that mattered: the Pacific Fleet’s fuel farm and the dry docks. As it really happened, the battleships that were saved in this alternate timeline weren’t especially critical to the new form of battle conducted by aircraft from over the horizon. But loss of the fuel farm at Pearl Harbor would have set Pacific Fleet operations back many months, and loss of the docks and repair facilities would have mattered even more with respect to healing all of the battle damage in the coming months.
None of it would have probably altered the inevitable end result but the timeline and campaign series would have been different.
I had often heard that the Japanese should have hit the fuel farm but was surprised recently to read that it was not as valuable as was thought. I was told that fuel was not in short supply and a fuel ship from San Diego could easily fill in for the gap.
So i am not sure what to believe now.
It wasn’t the fuel itself, it was the proximity of the fuel to where it was needed. Fuel could be brought from the West Coast but that would have tied up a lot of shipping that was desperately needed elsewhere. Tankers weren’t nearly the size then that they are now so it would have taken a lot of ships to replenish the fleet and keep it at sea- and that creates a vulnerability that could have been exploited if the Japanese were smart enough to exploit it.
There is a discussion in Askhistorians about it. They quote Alan Zinn
"A real measure of the impact of the destruction of the tanks and fuel would be how long it would have taken to restore the damage. Oil tanks are simply constructs-a steel shell, a floating top, and a roof. The shell was essentially shaped sheet metal, something easily handled by the shipyard. It would have taken about 5,000 tons of steel to reconstruct the damaged or destroyed tanks. That amount of metal could have been provided by one cargo shipment from the West Coast. The consequences might have been on the order of imposing a two month delay in the construction of two destroyers. Replacing the fuel stockpile would require allocating sufficient tankers to provide the cargo lift needed. The table shows the number of tankers that would have to be assigned to the West Coast-Pearl Harbor run to replace the lost stockpile in the stated time.
Months Tankers Required
1 13-20
2 7-10
3 5-7"
-Zinn, Attack on Pearl Harbor: Strategy, Combat, Myths, Deceptions pg. 319
(Zinn also points out that the US lost 43 tankers in the first three months of 1942 to German U-Boats in the Atlantic, so the diversion of tankers to Pearl Harbor in December 1941, would likely have prevented at least some of those losses.) Knocking out the drydocks would have done more damage, but destroying a dry dock via aerial attack would have been very difficult to achieve with World War 2 era technology. (There's a reason that when the Allies wanted to destroy the German drydock at St. Nazaire, they rammed a destroyer loaded with time delayed explosives into the drydock rather than simply bombing it from the air.)
If surprise was not achieved, the planes would have returned to the carriers and not attacked the base. Though in position, i doubt the shooting would start. Observed, escorted, but not shot. Do remember that neither country had declared war or issued an ultimatum. If the fist wave abandons the attack, then the whole Japanese fleet is in international waters and not yet hostile. The whole southerner strategy might be called off.
What happens next this scenario? Pretty much the same exact thing. The United States would mobilize, declare war, and then we are off and running - although perhaps a little better off than what actually happened.
The Japanese had spies, submarines, and scout planes all providing reconnaissance. One of them would catch the sortie out of Pearl and warn the Japanese fleet. They would then need to withdraw to Truk before launching the first strike wave.
Failing that, the Zero pilots would have fared far better against the American fighters had they been up in the air, the American pilots didn't have the the necessary tactics yet to deal with them.
The Japanese still have air superiority, if they are able to find the fleet, they'll be able to sink it in open sea. More American sailors and ships are permanently lost.
I agree with everything you’re saying here except…..Truk is 3500 miles away from Pearl Harbor 😅😅😅 why the heck would they retreat literally halfway across the pacific lol