>>18547435
No. The US would just be set back and also significantly more pissed off.

lol no

America would've just built more, and in fact did build more despite not losing most of the fleet

maybe if the US never developed the atom bomb Japan could've held out and made taking the home islands too costly for America to commit to, and then gotten a conditional surrender, instead of being forced to unconditionally surrender

Likely even in this scenario they'd be forced to divest all their imperial territories, possibly even Korea which had been part of Japan for decades at that point, but since it was on the mainland it would've been trivial for China, now free from Japanese occupation, to invade it, or for the Soviets to eventually get around to it

Then you also have the fact that Americans were already livid over the Pearl Harbor attacks even when they were not nearly as destructive as they could have been. The damage done was enough to make Americans demand unconditional surrender and drop two atomic weapons on Japanese cities. Imagine the response if the attack was actually far worse. Over 2400 people still died in the PH attack, and it wasn't considered very successful. An attack that left twice or even three times that number dead, I don't think Americans would've stopped until Japan was a lifeless bunch of rocks in the sea.

>>18547521
But weren't the Americans able to rebuild their ships Because the war was far off in the pacific. If the IJN had an initial naval superiority, couldn't they just sail around the American Coast and bombard the harbors utilized for ship manufacturing?

No, but I remember reading that if Japan had destroyed all the oil reserves and dock facilities at Pearl instead it would have prolonged a war by a year and a half

>>18547672
Hi, if you remember the article could you please link it; I'd be curious to read it

>>18547693
Looks like it was actually a quote by Nimitz himself which is where I remembered it from

"Had the Japanese destroyed the oil, it would have prolonged the war another two years."

>>18547521
>instead of being forced to unconditionally surrender
It ended up effectively being conditional when the US realized some of its demands were counter-productive, such as removing the Emperor. This was something Japan's top diplomat understood and desperately tried to relay to his leaders.

>>18547535
No. The US would still have coastal defences. At best, they'd lose Hawaii but still rebuild on the West Coast and inevitably push the Japanese out.

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>>18547435

Japanese strategy was sound, but the US would have ultimately out produced them.

The Japanese also played with the big distances in the Pacific, which complicated logistics, but American ingenuity prevailed