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Comment by NeedMoreTea | Hacker News Reader

Strategically crucial in a Pacific that had seen most everything the Japan side of Midway fall. If Midway had fallen, New Guinea, Coral Sea and Fiji were next in line, putting Australia and New Zealand at risk. What you call minimal gain would, had Yamamoto's plan come off, have put over 60% of the Pacific under Imperial Japanese control.

US would have been fighting their way across the Pacific, island to island at a range that no longer permitted bombing the mainland of Japan. Which, as seen at the end of the war, was subject to colossal losses.

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You're assuming that Japan could have kept Midway resupplied, let alone defended it. From what I understand, that's very questionable.

Midway wasn't keeping Japan contained in the South Pacific - the two were as militarily separated as Midway and the Aleutians. Japan probably could have taken the South Pacific in early 1942, in fact - but instead divided her fleet carriers up piecemeal, available to be defeated in detail.

No it wasn't keeping them contained, but it was an attempt to draw out the US carriers. Had the US lost Midway and Japan not got bogged down in the endless, unwinnable campaign in the Solomons that absorbed endless Japanese resources, Yamamoto's plan may have worked as his stepping stone to Hawaii. Only Midway and they probably couldn't have kept it... Had they got to Hawaii, I'm not sure Japan would have cared much about the atoll.

As it was, with help in the Solomons, Midway turned the war in the Pacific. Least that's how I understand it, though I've certainly read more of the war in Europe. :)

My understanding is that while the US losing her carriers at Midway would have allowed Japan free reign in the South Pacific for a few months, that was already the case for anywhere that all 6 fleet carriers showed up. Nothing the US had - combined, worldwide - could match those 6. Killing the US carriers at Midway was just to turn it from a 6v3 to a 6v0 - instead it ended up 2v2, but so goes war.

Japan invading Hawaii would have caused a famine if they succeeded - it'd be even harder to keep supplied than Midway, but with dozens of times the population.

In my opinion Midway marked the turning point of the war in the Pacific, but that turning point was inevitable as long as the US could credibly say "we're going to commission 6 fleet carriers with a full suite of aircraft over a 12 month period". There's a great video here [0] that illustrates the differences in production over the course of the war. For instance, the US commissioned 17 fleet carriers and 9 light carriers from 1941 on - Japan commissioned 7 and 1, respectively.

0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9ag2x3CS9M

You are right of the unarguability of US manufacturing against Imperial Japan's, but that inevitability still doesn't eliminate the time recapturing territory that had Japanese presence. Their no surrender policy made island recaptures slow, brutal and ugly. Even with carrier provided air superiority.

Had they got to Hawaii, I imagine the experience would have been similar to all Japanese occupied territories -- famine, brutality, extensive forced labour and systemic murder. So long as the troops are fed, and enough comfort women can be found, nothing much else mattered...

The Japanese probably never had the logistical capacity to actually capture Hawaii. Hawaii is a supply chain 4000 miles away, and is not exactly rich in natural or industrial resources that can sustain itself. Getting a major fleet to Hawaii would eat up most of the IJN's support ships, and if someone at Pearl Harbor had the presence of mind to destroy the fuel tanks there before retreating, the IJN would have its fleet stuck there without any means of resupply, which would be easy pickings for the USN to recapture.

Granted, Yamamoto himself had no illusions re: a protracted struggle between Japanese industry, vs. American industry of the '30's/'40's era.

Assuming no loss of political will, I suspect even in a worse case scenario where the US lost all its 3 carriers, it would still have eventually produced enough to win the war. Just maybe it would have taken several years longer...

In 1943, the US was commissioning an Essex-class carrier more or less every month, so the extra time would have been closer to "several months longer" instead.

Yeah - the US commissioned 17 fleet carriers, 9 light carriers and a whopping 76 escort carriers over the course of the war. Japan? 7, 1 and 4.

That's roughly my interpretation too -- there's no way Japan could out-manufacture US industry, and the difference in materiel, ship building and aircraft production wins out, even if Midway had been a catastrophic US loss.

I suspect a couple of years longer is much nearer the mark than a few months as the Japanese dug to never surrender, but second guessing history is a no cost game... Who knows what other dominoes would have fallen, and where, in the extra time.

Yeah, the US GDP was 4x Japans at the start of the war and 7x bigger at the end. Japans fate was sealed on Dec 7th, 1941.

But would a Midway disaster have extended the war 2 years? The US would become the worlds only nuclear power in 1945 and start cranking out atomic bombs no matter what happened at Midway.

I think you're ignoring the Soviet Unions contribution to the war. Even if America lost all 3 carriers you'd still have Manchuria and Korea failing to the soviets and the imminent threat of an invasion to the home islands, which even in our time line forced the surrender of Japan. Japan might have had more resources and industry to combat this but they'd still at least lose at roughly the same time on continental Asia.

https://youtu.be/l9ag2x3CS9M

One of the best visualizations I've come across of just how dominant the US industrial base was in the 1940s under full mobilization.

You're also assuming that Midway would have fallen. Japanese amphibious doctrine frankly wasn't up to the task of taking a properly fortified Midway.

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