@Xi:
Actually, the Imperial Japanese Navy’s mistake was not bombing the oil depots & refineries on Oahu. If they had done so, and then kept the pressure on, the US war in the Pacific would have been set back to San Diego(that’s 2000 miles and about a 6 month to 1 year time span according to some strategists).
The carriers(CAs [or CVs to navy pukes]) would have been a nice lil bonus had they been in port.
Oh, let’s not fail to mention the US LUCK at Midway! 4 JPN CAs swimmin wif da fishies fer 1 US CA(even the IJN thought it was 2 US CAs).
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Atta boy, Nimitz! - Xi
Japan’s mistake was that the army was incompetent and that the navy knew this and because of their long time fights, the army appointed fools to the navy commandships. Admiral Yamamoto did not want the Admiral who commanded the attack, Admiral Nagumo, to command it. He knew fro mthe beginning that Nagumo would screw up and he did at Pearl Harbor, at Midway and at Guadalacanal. Had Yamamoto been able to appoint his own navy officers, which he couldn’t do even though he was command-in-chief of the navy, then Japan might have actually been able to win the PAcific War quickly. Yamamoto had predicted that he could keep the Americans running for a year before they’d turn around and defeat Japan, and he was right. He knew that the army would make too many mistakes.