At the risk of hair-splitting, the Japanese, it could be argued, did not attempt air superiority either…the US and Japan was not at war. Sueprise was their air superiority…and that lasted but a couple of hours…Also, considering there were 6 Japanese carriers launching a/c, the Japanese would have been wise to have launched a 3rd and 4th strike and really struck a far more serious blow if they had hit dry-docks, fuel depots, etc…the Japanese began, what would become a pattern in the war, of cautiousness at the decisive moment…
again, all true points… but their initial planning was geared towards eliminating American air power to both defend and strike back at the outset. The first wave’s dive bombers along with a portion of the 1st wave level bombers were tasked with hitting the known fighter bases as well as the Naval/MarineCorps Air stations. This was the essence of winning temporary air superiority over the chosen battlefield. Which they did. Only during the second wave were dive bombers tasked with anti shipping strikes, along with another strike at the airfields. And yes the failure to launch a strike/3rd wave aginst the oil tank farms, dry docks, and other support facilities would enable the US to recover from the overall atack far quicker than had those also been hit.
However, in all fairness to the Japanese, a more serious defense would have been encountered, and the possibility of at least Enterprise being able to locate and strike back would have increased. At the very least, in all probablity their losses to fighters would more than likely have doubled. Between four US fighter pilots: Taylor, Welch, Brown, and Rasmussen, 1/3 (10 kills total among them) of all Japanese aircraft losses (29 lost) are credited. More were available and airborne in the wake of the second wave.
But yes, again, other Japanese Admirals (but not all) would break off a successfull action when an even greater victory or a victory was within reach.
First off, Squeekie, get to me off-line to talk about anthropology. As for the Pearl Harbor/Taranto topic, I think Yamamoto was well aware of the exercises against Pearl Harbor, as well as the actual results at Taranto, and both of these items helped form his strategy for the initial Japanese attacks at Pearl Harbor, and the Phillipines as well. As regards Japanese appreciation for air-superiority is concerned, ALL of their strategy was dependent on fully establishing both local and area air-superiority in order to achieve their objectives, and this strategy was faithfully adhered to until they stretched just a bit too far by trying to establish yet another air-base at Guadalcanal (which could not be continuously covered by air assets), at which point, the whole house of cards began to collapse…
The stratgies employed at the begining for the war was only possible to the changes in ships like the monitor and penn.which prove what could be done.The aircraft carrier was historically significant in that you could now bring air power with you and changed the face of navial stratgies forever.I readed where the C.S.S. Hunley was menitioned this two was a change but not of significances untill the torpedo came about.This made subs a deadly weapon then and gave then range to hit there targets from a distance.Digger
A submarine is not just useful to sink ships with torpedoes. There hasn’t been a ship sunk by torpedoes (that I know of, anyway) since the Falkland War. The major contribution of submarines is in covert operations and intelligence gathering. More than most of us will ever know. Why do you think that they keep building them? And improving on them? Don’t even get me started on boomers.
All true! And while torpedoes haven’t been used for a while, this is mostly because there has not been a naval battle since the Falklands. Yet the submarine continues to prove its worth through the use of submarine-launched cruise missiles against land targets. But of course, much the same can be said about aircraft carriers, in that they represent just about the apex of ‘power projection’ of a non-nuclear type. As for an individual ship, perhaps it might be worth mentioning USS Langley, and IJN Hosho in this regard, as both ships represent the first ‘purpose-designed’ aircraft carriers (were not conversions), and perhaps the Japanese I-400 submarines, as they were the first submarines built for strategic, not tactical purposes (designed to attack Panama and the US West Coast with bomber aircraft)…
Ranger, not Langley, was the first US purpose built carrier. The latter was a converted collier.
It is difficult to think of ANY battles where one side won WITHOUT, at least, local air-superiority…
There’s an off the wall theory that a group of Norse Voyagers prior than 1000 CE(AD) made it around Cape Horn and up to the island of Hawaii. Each of the Hawaiian islands held their own pantheon of dieties. Three of the dieties for the island of Hawaii have common factors that are also different from the other dieties in the pantheon which is their fair skin and hair colors. Pele is a blond, while her brother, the war god, is a red head like their younger sister. Fair skin and blond and red hair coloring although common in the Norse is not so with the Polynesians.
I thought the theory as interesting especially that it could have been two migrating groups that arrived in the Hawaiian islands about the same time. There is some overlap in the times the Norse and Polynesians did their voyaging. Imagaine the impact of a Norse warrior with metal weapons and armor against warriors using bone, skin and wood! He would surely be a god of war!
FYI
Mike T.
It’s a waste of time to look at such off the wall theories. Norse ships were open, not decked. Every known Norse voyage was conducted hugging the coast with no more than 2-3 days out of land, a far cry from navigating an absolute minimum of 2000 miles to reach Hawaii. The weather of North Atlantic on the worst day is a flat calm next to the most serene sea you will ever see in Cape Horn. To say the Norse navigate in open boats around the cape horn and reach Hawaii 2000 miles from the nearest land in any significant numbers is fantasy even more out there than Chinese arrived in North America prior to 12,000 years ago. I think we in the west has expanded far too much energy, and make far too grand leaps of imagination, to twist some distant factoids into a self-satisfying fantasy of how our ancesters must have been to be gods to other parts of the world. I have no doubt some day someone would claim the Viking long ships somehow got to the moon first as well.
Chuck Fan - I just threw that in to show how a little fact could be used to spun a good yarn. Its much truer to believe that the Iroquois may have had contact with the Norse and possibly absorbed some of the lost settlements. In the Iroquois language there are 200 words that are the same in meaning and pronunciation as old Norse.
Mike T.
And certainly the native North Americans didn’t treat the Norsemen as gods, just peppered them with arrows until they went away! Another interesting theory involves the ancient Irish under St Brendan teh Bold, who supposedly ended up in America. The only evidence for this on this side of the pond seems to be the Mandan indians, many of whom had red hair and blue eyes, plus a few linguistic similarities…
ref necessity for air superiority to win battles, that is essentially correct…
It is known that the gene which causes red hair amoungst some Europeans is extremely ancient, was present amongst the neaderthals, and certainly predated the rise of Homo sapiens. So red hair amongst Indians does not necessarily imply recent gene exchange with the Irish.
It would be curious to see if the blue eyes of American Indians were caused by the same gene as that which caused blue eyes in Northern Europeans. If they are not, then the blue eyes of Indians would have nothing to do with European contact. There have also been other superficial similarities between different peoples of the world that later proved to be derived from different genes, and so do not constitute evidence of migration bring the same gene from one to another. For example, the relatively fair skin of East Asians can be shown to be caused by a different set of genes than those which gave Europeans fair skin, so the fact that east Asians often have fair skin does not imply fair skinned Europeans migrated to Asia and intermarried with darker skinned natives. Instead it is likely that homo sapiens arrived at both northern Europe and east Asia quite dark skinned, having freshly come out of Africa. Only later did Europeans and Asians independently evolved lighter skin in independent response to local environments.
As far as any battles being won without at least local airsuperiority;
The Korean War comes to mind. The Chinese never established a daytime battlefield air presence, let alone air superiority, but were able to fight and win some ground battles. The daytime Air War there involving Chinese aircraft was more strategic in nature. The night air war did see an offensive tactical Chinese presence over the battlefield, but in primarily a nusciance roll.
Also the initial phases of the Yom Kippur war. Arab air defences negated the Israeli Air Force and allowed them, especially in the Sinai, to achieve local tactical victories without local air superiority.
Even during the phase when Mig-15 first appeared?
The Mig-15’s were almost always flown either over water in the area of the Yalu River, in a traditional air defence roll defending North Korean targets/deep airspace against UN interdiction or strategic airstrikes. One one occasion a group of unmarked Migs took off from Vladivostok and approached a carrier Task Group at low level and were intercepted by F9Fs. The Panther jets held their own in the low level fight, downing some Migs and turning the rest back. This was possibly one of the few offensive tactical type missions flown, but at sea, rather than over land. I have read that the Soviets were quite concerned with losing a MiG-15 over UN forces on the battlefield and having its’ secrets revealed.
This seems a bit of a contradiction… If the Chinese were able to prevent the US from achieving air superiority over the battlefield, then it was really not necessary to achieve air superiority themselves… Of course towards the end, the US did achieve a fair measure of air superiority, and unsurprisingly, the Army started to kick Chinese butt…
Notice I didn’t say it was definitive evidence, but only that it was some evidence (and evidence not found among any other Indian tribes, to my knowledge). Certainly there are always anomalies in any population, but it is never a good idea to overly generalize, or dismiss anything out of hand (it might jump up and bite you in the butt one day!).
No, the Chinese or Soviets ever prevented UN forces from having battlefield air superiority. Yet they were able to push UN forces back south of the 38th parallel by ground power alone. Certainly a battlefield victory there without air superiority or even presence. The closest they did to that was by ground power forcing thewithdrawl of Korean based aircraft to Japan in that time period. Later after the stalemate portion of the war was in effect, they would win occasional hill battles in spite of UN air superiority. Chinese and Soviet Migs had their strongest effect upon US strategic bombing, forcing it to a night only campaign.