Looking at the pacific theatre of ww2 i realized that americans are not especially good fighters or masterful tacticians. The battles they won in ww2 involved essentially zerg rushing the japanese causing constant attrition at the expense of their airwings. They could do that because they had a massive heavy industry behind, they could churn out carriers, planes and pilots faster than the japanese by orders of magnitude, and had all the steel, coal and oil they could possibly want, while japan had to ship those from all over the pacific.
And even ehen america developed more advanced technologies than japan, it was simply because it put pressure on the enemy and destroyed most of its bases and killed most of their pilots, to the point where they gimped technological advancement through, again, grinding attrition.

Implessive

attrition warfare is usually how most serious wars are won, since it's tied into strategic success. a nation can have many tactical victories and successes but still resoundingly lose.

>>64015972 (OP)
>start war because the US won’t sell you oil
>kamikaze all your pilots
>”WTF why don’t we have oil or pilots?”

>>64015972 (OP)
>No mention of B-29s which had basically no counter.
US spent more developing the Superfortress than the Manhattan project.

>military assassinates doves
>has full control
>get oil embargoed
>diplomacy is not an option, only war
Many such cases.

>attacks pearl harbour
>immediatly regrets it afterwards
Didn't japs think before acting?

>>64015972 (OP)
And it worked. You are obviously over simplifying but when you have superior tech and basically unlimited supply and are fighting an island hoping campaign against a fanatical enemy your tactical options are kind of limited.
They know where you are headed next and if you skip ahead, you leave your supply chain vulnerable and potentially cut off your assault force.

>>64015989
High altitude bombers didn't have much of a role in naval battles where targets are tiny and mobile, and it was on sea where the most important engagements between usa and japan took place

>>64015999
Samurai blood, please try to understand.

>>64016007
But bombing the shit out of Japanese industy made a huge difference late 1944 on.
Same as bombing industry significantly contributed to the German defeat.

>>64015999
japan was of the mindset that tactical victories can win a war. which is sometimes the case, but usually not during total war. they had a heap of early tactical victories that in many ways, could have forced nations to submit or concede, but as we saw, nations can be stubborn.

>>64016016
That's why Gundam has become more and more a cope about Japan losing the war and the fanbase/later writers self-inserting as Zeon.

Where before it was a more straight-up reproduction of WW2 with Zeon being a Space Nazi Germany/Imperial Japan fusion.

>>64016016
Anyone else but the US they would have beat. They couldn't counter US manufacturing capability. Which is insane since we were also fighting in Europe and arming the Brits and Soviets.
We had basically geographic immunity, but that ability to just keep churning out equipment is borderline unimaginable. There were thousands of people just to make sure that things got shipped not even if they were needed but because they couldn't have a backup that upset production lines and cause even more problems.

>>64016030
You think they could've 1v1ed the Royal Navy? Or the Soviets in Manchuria?

>>64016030
pearl harbor itself was them wanting an overwhelming tactical success to force the us into backing off. much like how japan forced russia to back off long before from a decisive naval battle.

the japanese had plans to destroy the panama canal, i wonder how the calculus wouldve changed if that happened

>>64016050
apparently it doesn't work when your opponent is the size of a continent.

>>64016061
who cares, italians wanted to bomb new york, so what? pure speculation

>>64015972 (OP)
>Ichiki Detachment
>March on Port Moresby
>Operation Ichi-Go
>Marianas Turkey Shoot
>IJA Air-Battle off Taiwan / Phillipine Sea
WAI AMERLIKAN ZERG RUSH?!, 笑いwwwww ::grass::

Every accusation is a confession.

>>64016067
they had submarines with floatplanes that could do it, they had proven they could conduct (ineffectual) air raids on the west coast, and they were rehearsing the attack up until they ran out of materiel in 1945. its not the most pie in the sky axis war fantasy imo

>>64015972 (OP)
I think that's a bit reductive. The disparity in experienced pilots as the war went on was partly due to differences in training. The US rotated successful pilots back to train new ones, the IJN did not, so the losses of experienced pilot cut much deeper.

I also seem to remember reading that Japan knew at the start that they could not hope to grind the US down in a war of attrition, they hoped to draw the USN into a decisive battle and force a settlement that would establish their Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.

>>64016046
>Soviets in Manchuria
To simplify things, they tried at Kalkhin Gol, were dissatisfied with the results, and turned their attentions south.

>>64016097
Which should've always been translated as "Commonwealth" from the start, even if it's not simply 連邦 "renpou"

>>64016064
it's that mindset of scaring or traumatizing a bigger foe so much from your tactical ability that they back down. it's one of those 50/50 thingies where it sometimes works, but when it doesn't it can be disastrous.

>>64015980
>kamikaze all your pilots
The whole kamikaze meme emerged as a response to losing all their pilots beforehand:
>can't adequately train replacements fast enough to keep up with losses
>have to send them out before they're ready
>this is going to be a suicide mission for them no matter what
>that being the case, we might as well make it the most effective suicide mission possible
>>64015999
To my understanding, Yamamoto was among the officers who considered going to war with the USA in the first place to be a questionable idea; obviously this was not the prevailing faction.
>>64016097
continuing from previous point: when the tripartite pact was being signed, he apparently gave a warning something along the lines of that he could give 6-12 months of victory against the USA+UK, but with no expectation of success after that.
If that were the case, then shocking the enemy with some quick decisive victories until they accept unfavorable terms was basically their only hope of actually winning. Of course, it's debatable whether the USA would actually yield in practice after the outrage from the whole Pearl Harbor affair, but it was their only viable option (besides the obvious correct answer of just not going to war in the first place).

>>64016016
They were so focused on winning a decisive battle that they forgot to ask, 'then what happens'?

>>64016151
Japan seemed overly quick to resort to suicide attacks on land or air.
The anti tank lances were utterly useless.

>>64015972 (OP)
FDR needed a way to get into WW2. He'd already built up the MIC. His cabinet was full of Bolsheviks. He had intel from the German banks proving Allied economics were 10x bigger. He knew he would win - as long as he had a good reason so the America isolationist tendency didn't cuck out.

So he forced Japan into a position where they had to attack, or give up their dreams of empire. And he knew that since Japan's public doctrine was based on the Russo-Japanese war they would choose attack and pursue a limited war with a traditional decisive victory and face-saving treaty in the European tradition of cabinet wars.

Once they attacked and America declared war, FDR straight away went to save Communism in Europe.

>>64015972 (OP)
Now look at the Philippine Sea

>>64015972 (OP)
Things developed in the 1930s were already outdated by 1941-42. The US wasn't at active war so they weren't constantly advancing/producing, though even before Pearl Harbor the writing was on the wall and new planes & ships were being planned.
On top of that, there were other problems like American torpedoes. Those didn't get solved until the war was already well underway.
The US had to go to war with what it had. Learning many hard lessons, but it did not mindlessly throw men to their deaths. Nor did it keep them fighting until they died, crew training became a focus and lessons learned in battle were brought back to students and equipment designers.

>>64016304
You're not wrong about FDR, but you are being overly generous to the Japanese here. They could have just NOT attacked. So what that they were known to favor the hawkish option; adapt or fucking die. That was their chance to change direction, they didn't take it. The results are history.

>>64016046
If the UK had been Hawaii? And no US support?

They would have beat the Soviets even if the Soviets had not been at war with Germany provided they never attacked the US and the US didn't lend lease the Russians.
On the fence if they could have done it while still fighting the Chinese.

Say Germany never invades Poland and Pearl Harbor never happens.
Japan only advances West into Asia.
Can the Japs beat China and Russia if the otherwise allies don't take sides or just sell equipment to the highest bidder, or both?

>>64016427
Well we know what IJN would do to soviet navy. And they literally raped the chinese to death.
So they stop at the Himalayas because India is still British?
Are the dumb enough to push on Mos- Yeah, they are. Then suffer a retreat, then counterattack and end up with half or 2/3 of Russia? Plus the Eastern stans?
And can they stay content without encroaching on Australia?

>>64015972 (OP)
This is a midtier take but it has merit. We threw destroyers and Marines at them like candy in a parade.

>>64015972 (OP)
this is a retarded take, the US made several intelligent strategic and tactical moves before their industrial advantages even made the war totally one-sided.

The Battle of Midway was a combination of superiour intelligence (the Haiwaii code breakers, working 24/7 to crack Jap comms) then Nimitz took a huge gamble to actually listen to that intelligence and put his carriers in a favourable position.

Then the choice to attack Guadalcanal, in an extremely quick fashion, before the japs could dig in there, before the flow of resources from the US had happened. That was all Admiral King, it was his forceful leadership that pushed the theater commanders to get it done. He also made a timely replacement of Ghormerly for Hasley in the dark days of that campaign. That battle force the Japs into a terrible sucking battle that consumed their ships and air force and broke the back of their resistance at the far end of their advance.

Then rather than smashing into fortified islands like Rabal, the americans invented the island hopping strategy to utilized their naval mobility and air power to go around the japs.

Then they also chose to advance along two parallel axis of attack, one across the central pacific and one through the south pacific to force the Japs to defend everywhere. A lot of people at the time wanted to just go in one direction or just defend.

Of course every total war in the industrial age will end up in a state of attrition, that is just part of the game, but look at the choices made in 42-43 when it was even and the Americans look for more flexible, intelligent and realistic compared to the japs.

>>64015972 (OP)
Eh...not really. American tacticians knew they had the material advantage so their tactics were even handed and conservative. Beat the hell out of a position with fire support and then move in ground forces carefully and methodically. It's slow and unimpressive but it works so long as you've got the resources to do it.

As for fighters, Americans aren't very aggressive but are very determined on the defense. You see Americans all but overrun by Japanese forces and fighting it out in hand to hand. You see Paratroopers holding positions against German Armor. Audie Murphy got his MoH for just holding a position against overwhelming odds.

>>64016507
NTA but this is mostly strategic victories. Arguably more important than tactics but OP did specify tacticians.

>>64016061
It's impossible to happen as the damage needed would have required effectively.an entire battle group to even hope to damage it. Even then at best you'd be able to fuck with some locks, which given the US direct control of the canal would mean that we'd just scramble a bunch of 4Fs and women to go fix up the canal. At best I could see it adding a year. We already had a bunch of ships on the West coast as well as several heavy docks. It definitely would have hampered things, but not long enough to stop the inevitable.

>>64016382
You are unaware of all the effort FDR put into preventing that. He manipulated their cabinet to get the pacifists out of power, humiliated diplomats to put the militarists in power, and used our code-breaking advantages to systematically cross all their red lines no matter what it cost to us or how unrelated it was.
It was a 9/11 type moment. The strategy had been decided 5+ years in advance. The only question was how to get the American people angry enough to back it. The target had to be made to shoot first.

>>64016534
Point Luck was a tactical choice, and it was intelligent, the battle of Guadalcanal was full of tactical victories, literally the first major land engagement was a total tactical mismatch, the marines were dug in with better firepower, shredded a retarded frontal attack, then outflanked and destroyed the entire unit, literally grinding them up like a meat packing factory.

This was repeated through the entire campaign.

The naval battles were certainly full of good Japanese tactics in terms of night fighting and torpedoes compared to the USN. Navally it was the theme of the early war where the japs got tactical victories but lost strategically. I think one admiral actually said after one of the last 43 carrier engagements "we got the dirty end of the stick tactically, but handed it back strategically."

Of course by 44 the japs were acting retarded both strategically as they had lost the initiative and tactically as the quality of their forces had declined to the point where they couldn't even count on naval air power.

But there is a more critical difference especially for the air power, the US rotated pilots constantly, they trained them constantly, even hotshot super aces were sent back home for more training, compared to the japs who kept their guys flying until they died. This allowed the US to develop sophisticated tactics and have lopsided tactical victories constantly. So in the case the material advantage leads to strategic advantage and that leads to tactical advantage.