A day in history.

The Japanese move against Pearl Harbor was the logical move. They had to knock out the Pacific fleet.

We differ on this.

Even if there had been Intel that the Japanese wanted to attack Pearl that Intel would have been ignored as trash or misinformation. Conventional wisdom was: How could they attack Pearl and leave those bombers (whose numbers were being built up) alone in the Philippines?

The attack at Pearl was not an easy one as there aren't major ports close enough to it (well, at least not ones in Japanese hands). Some of the task force that was part of the attack was operating near the end of its effective range. Attacking the Philippines, the Dutch East Indies, Hong Kong - that all made more sense than trying for Pearl.

As for the carriers being out - that was one of those accidents of histories, one that wouldn't have mattered in the long run. The US was quickly out producing the Japanese in carriers and the US carriers were bigger - losing the ones at Pearl wouldn't have changed the outcome of the war. It might have slowed it down by about six months but it wouldn't have changed it. And if someone knew ahead of time then a couple of those battleships could have been out "practicing escort maneuvers" with the carriers.

Goodgulf

Here is another opinion. If Hitler had not made a pact with Japan and had not declared war on the US Roosevelt would have had an extremely hard time getting the US involved in Europe. The opinion of the US population would have been, "They have their war in Europe and we have our war in the Pacific."

Remember that there were relatively few Japanese Americans but huge numbers of German Americans. It is unlikely that Russia would have been able to defeat Germany without help. And even if Russia managed to hold on for years once the US developed the atomic bomb Germany would not have been far behind and that would certainly be the end for Russia.

The result would probably have been a detente between Germany, who controlled Europe, and the US, who controlled North America and the Pacific, similar to the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union with each afraid to start a nuclear war. After that. who knows?

Germany wasn't close to the nuke. Thanks to their official hatred of "Jew Science" - that is any scientific work done by anyone Jewish - they were ordering their scientists to ignore various fundamental principals.

Also, they lacked supplies. Without Canada's uranium the US would have been hard pressed to build the bomb. As for the rest, name the supply and (because of the war effort) Germany was short on it.

As the tanks were racing to Berlin there was a German science team hard at work trying to achieve a chain reaction - but their project lacked lead shielding. If they had succeeded they would have killed themselves with radiation poisoning, but they couldn't let a little thing like that slow them down. It wasn't until after this group was in a prison camp and the bomb was dropped on Japan that any of them actually worked out how much material they would need to make the bomb.

No, making an atomic bomb isn't easy. The only reason the Russians succeeded is they knew it could be done (and had some of the theories given to them).

Back on topic, someone did predict a Japanese bombing raid on Pearl. He predicted years before it happened (1925) and was court marshaled for suggesting that the friendly Japanese (our allies in WWI) would attack the US. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Mitchell_%28general%29#Posthumous_recognition for more on what happened to his case after Pearl.

Goodgulf

"I've always found the 'conspiracy' argument RE the U.S. defenses at Pearl Harbor being in a low state of alertness, while the American aircraft carriers were away at sea (and hence undamaged by the bombing), to be rather compelling. Franklin Roosevelt was desperate to get the U.S.A. into the war in Europe, one way or another... --C.K."

This is reading history backwards. In 1941, the navies of the world still considered dreadnought battleships to be their most important vessels. Only Britain, the USA and Japan had aircraft carriers, and few believed they were anything more than escorts for the dreadnoughts. Carrier-borne aircraft were still in their infancy, and quite primitive when compared to land-based ones. With one exception, the torpedo bomber attack on the German battleship Bismarck, the only successful air attacks on dreadnoughts had been on those that were stationary on the high seas or at rest in their bases.

It was only after the sinking by Japanese bombers of the Prince of Wales and Repulse, the air battles in the between Japanese and American carrier fleets that never saw each other, and the destruction of the Yamato by American torpedo bombers that the truth dawned that the age of the dreadnought was over. Dreadnoughts were simply too vulnerable to air attack; little more than floating coffins.

That said, of course, it is possible that President Roosevelt was sufficiently far-sighted to realise all this, but I doubt it. Surely, had he been so he would have sent the carriers out to look for the Japanes fleet and destroy their planes as soon as they took off.

It is tempting to think the Americans set themselves up to give themselves an excuse to go to war, but I find that difficult to believe. The outrage expressed by the President and by the American people after Pearl Harbor surely gives the lie to that theory. And why should America wish to go to war? It was still recovering from the great depression, and with a vast ocean to its east and west it was invulnerable to attack from either direction.

I think those who believe the conspiracy theories that surround Pearl Harbor are misguided. I too would recommend a viewing of 'Tora, Tora, Tora'. A joint US-Japanese production, it is a thoroughly researched, historically accurate film that lays bare the mistakes made by both sides and leaves one in little doubt that it was incompetence, carelessness and complacency on the part of the defenders and misjudgements on the part of the attackers that allowed the Japanese to destroy the American fleet. Nothing more.

Now I ask you--how many spanking sites have such erudite discussions of world history? Name one.
I'm so inspired I'm starting a thread on quantum physics. Of course that means I won't have any time to write spanking stories, but what the hell.

And we've barely scratched the surface on the old standbys, politics and religion.

We can also discuss the possible confirmation of the existence of the Higgs boson, and new theories of the speed of light.
But on mature consideration if I were to suggest a discussion subject it would be on the works of I K Brunel.

Let's not go crazy here

Actually, the Japanese Imperial Navy studied in depth the British Royal Navy's highly successful attack, via carrier-based torpedo-launching planes, against the Italian fleet in the naval base at Taranto on November 11, 1940, in which most of the Italian ships were either sunk or seriously damaged at a cost of only two aircraft to the British force.

To any navy that was paying attention, that one-sided victory--which should've been without surprise since Britain had been at war with Italy for five months--demonstrated the military value of aircraft carriers as a force of their own. The Japanese used the Taranto raid as the blueprint for their attack on Pearl Harbor just over a year later.

I'm guessing that the U.S. Navy wasn't oblivious to what had been demonstrated by the Royal Navy at Taranto either... --C.K.