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Originally Posted by tabs
The move down the Solomons was an extension of their empire...a gamble on their part..
Coral Sea did not end the threat to Australia..the move over the Owen Stanley's and a subsequent base on he Australian side of the island would have endangered Australia.
A loss at Midway would have opened the Hawaiian islands up to attack, thus making them a more unstable base of operations. Also the West Coast would have been opened up to Japanese raids...the end result is that the war in the Pacific would not have been the foregone conclusion it was but would have eventually ended the same way only it would have taken longer.
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You completely contradict yourself in this post.
Once Kido Butai had lost the carriers at the Battle of Coral Sea the threat to Australia was over. Dividing their carrier force was a gigantic mistake. They should have kept the whole force together. With the full weight of Kido Butai (6 fleet carriers) the Battle of the Coral Sea would have been very different. Instead they penny packeted their force, which doomed them at both Coral Sea, and later at Midway.
Stopping the invasion of Aus was the whole point of the US taking the Japanese on at Coral Sea to begin with.
There was never any real threat of invasion against Hawaii, the Japanese simply lacked the military power to take it. The fact that they were unable to take even a minor outpost like Midway is definitive proof of that. Against Hawaii, the air forces the Japanese would have faced would have been several times larger.
You guys should read the book "Shattered Sword", it covers all these topics pretty thoroughly and is considered to be the definitive work on Midway.