Pearl Harbor

The escort zeros had nothing to do but strafe. The dive bombers and torpedo bombers had designated targets. The planned third wave was to hit the fuel and dry docks but the decision was made not to have it happen due to lack of knowledge of the whereabouts of the rest of the pacific fleet.

So, are the escort zeros supposed to just sit around doing nothing? or strafe the fuck out of everything?

Let's see...waste ammo on unarmed sailors who are no threat and of so little consequence as not to be worth the bullets, or conserve ammo for possible USAF retaliation that may result in destruction of equipment and loss of personnel? That's a really difficult decision, there.

yup....cause the USAF existed in 1941......and they work with the Navy, too, huh?


Not sure if trolling, or just really stupid....

You know full and well what I meant, NT. Whether it was its own branch or not, the United States operated these things called aircraft, and we occasionally used them to shoot at other aircraft. That's why the bombers were escorted by Zeroes in the first place: to protect them from other aircraft, not to strafe unarmed sailors flailing about in the ocean.

nearly all of which were grounded and most already destroyed and runways scattered with debris, so with no enemy air on scene until well into the second wave of fighters, and even then it was minimal. Not much more than the planes that were patrolling the islands when the attack came.

and seeing as not everything was close together, there wasn't always a more important target to shoot at....so the pilots could either fly around not fighting a war, or they could engage the enemy.

Because obviously one should never be prepared for a threat that is possible but not immediately present. The Japanese had no way of knowing if or when aircraft support would be present.

Yes we all heard stories about how our vast 1941 air force with technologically advanced planes that could appear within an hour and completely decimate the any surprise aerial attack.

Yea the Japanese were not scared of a few dozen outdated fighters.

Point stands, drag. If they didn't expect resistance from our aircraft, those fighter escorts would not have been there to begin with.

They probably just threw them in there as a precaution.

Rotaretilbo wrote:Point stands, drag. If they didn't expect resistance from our aircraft, those fighter escorts would not have been there to begin with.

except the fighters were there for if the attack wasn't a surprise attack...which it was....so now there wasn't really anything for them to do. And there is no reason that a pilot can't strafe some shit, scan the skies....strafe some shit, scan the skies.

dragoon9105 wrote:Yes we all heard stories about how our vast 1941 air force with technologically advanced planes that could appear within an hour and completely decimate the any surprise aerial attack.

Yea the Japanese were not scared of a few dozen outdated fighters.

Then why retreat at all? It is doubtful that the fragments of the US Navy not at Pearl Harbor could have launched a serious counter to the Japanese fleet in the region, if the aircraft couldn't be a threat than what was?

Regardless, even if there was no other possible threat, there was definitely better targets available than the helpless and, overall, insignificant sailors in the ocean.

like?

and there was no retreat, since the Japanese had no intention of claiming the island in the first place.

KristallNacht wrote:like?

and there was no retreat, since the Japanese had no intention of claiming the island in the first place.

They were supposed to launch three waves right? And they only launched two? I could swear someone mentioned it in this thread.

I'd also like to point out that the systematic extermination of a populace to claim its resources is probably the single most inefficient way to lay claim to resources possible. This is because, if the local population is gone, the only way to actually take advantage of the captured resources is through mass migration. The whole thing would be incredibly unstable from an economic standpoint for decades. Probably the most efficient method would be to absorb the locals and let the Japanese slowly migrate in. In a perfect system, you would slowly eliminate the locals as more Japanese migrated in to create openings in an existing economic system until, eventually, the Japanese constitute the entire system.

Obviously the Japanese attacked to get the pearls.
Heavy risk, but so many people to kill, and pearls only can occur when blood enters salt water and irritates a clam, so clearly the general mission of the attack was to drop clams from the zeros while bombing the ships to generate a hefty supply of blood. By this attack, the Japanese in fact enriched Honolulu by increasing its number of valuable stones.