Quote:
Originally Posted by m21sniper
While midway could have gone either way, it would not have mattered in the end. The Japanese lost WWII the instant the first bomb landed on a US target at Pearl Harbor.
By the end of WWII the USN had IIRC 173 carriers of all types. The 3 at Midway were not going to make any real difference at all even if we lost all of them. For this reason, one cannot really argue that Midway was decisive...because the outcome of the war was already a foregone conclusion.
As for the Japanese, the utter destruction of Kido Butai ended all designs for pursuing an offensive doctrine in the Pacific. Forever after, they were on the strategic defensive.
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I find this a bit speculative. Nor do I think the conclusion was foregone., I also take issue with those who say it was American industry that won the war.
Although clearly a part of it, the much larger factor was American SCIENCE and TECHNOLOGY. We had the planes (B-29, P-51Norden Bomb Site), subs (GATO campaigns in the Pacific), Computers, (code cracking and targetting), radar and most importantly the A-bomb.
Unfortunately we had few of these items in 1941-1942. If the Japanese had won at Midway, there would have been little stopping them from running rampant over the Pacific, besieging Hawaii and maybe bombing the Panama Canal zone (to prevent transfer of fleets). In short, it would have been very hard for the US to maintain any kind of surface naval presence in the Pacific with no carriers
Of course the Japanese army kept advancing in China and Burma almost until the end of the war. They would have advanced much furtherer had we not kept our allies supplied. Without a surface navy that would have been impossible.