[NGTM-1R]

It's fashionable to say that Stavka had it in the bag, but they really didn't. The war for the Soviet Union was won on the back of the Soviet economy pulling off a miraculous recovery by moving the factories and getting them running better than before they moved, despite losing access to a great deal of materials.  There were an awful lot of things that could have gone wrong in that process and cost the Soviets the ability to rebuild their armor and artillery forces for 1942.

There was only one place where you can really get deterministic in World War 2, and that was that the United States was going to beat Japan. The ship hulls that would destroy the Japanese Empire were laid down before the first bombs fell on Pearl Harbor. The entire conflict was folly.

[StarSlayer]

It's fashionable to say that Stavka had it in the bag, but they really didn't. The war for the Soviet Union was won on the back of the Soviet economy pulling off a miraculous recovery by moving the factories and getting them running better than before they moved, despite losing access to a great deal of materials.  There were an awful lot of things that could have gone wrong in that process and cost the Soviets the ability to rebuild their armor and artillery forces for 1942.

There was only one place where you can really get deterministic in World War 2, and that was that the United States was going to beat Japan. The ship hulls that would destroy the Japanese Empire were laid down before the first bombs fell on Pearl Harbor. The entire conflict was folly.

I wouldn't say that they had it in the bag, the Soviets where certainly eaten alive in the initial German offensives.  If the Germans didn't go into the the war with the mindset to purge all the Slavs and instead played the rest of the Soviet satellite nations off the Russians it really could have gone the other way.  From what I've read though once they had the tools in hand the Strategic Offences put together by the Soviets where basically what broke the Wehrmacht and where more successful then the Operations of the Allies in the West.  I was given the impression the success of Cobra and the offense in the Lorraine happened in spite of Allied High command rather than because of them.  Not that Stavka could have put together something like D-Day, but in terms of moving the men and materiel into position to brutally rip a giant gaping hole in the front, pour combined arms formations to play merry hell with the behind the lines C&C and logistics and have enough forces to keep the attack in motion and forestall the enemy from counterattacking wasn't something the Germans or the Allies really attempted, and the Soviets did it regularly.  That at least is what my understanding was.

Actually, on the Pacific note, certainly the fact that we pumped out 24 Essex class carriers alone where more then the IJN was ever going to beat, but I was curious, if they managed to catch a flattop or two in Pearl, and/or pull off Midway, would they have been able to at least seal off the Pacific, albeit temporarily?

[NGTM-1R]

The thing is Stavka could do that (and did do that) because they had "more men then the Wehrmacht had bullets" to use your commentary. The Western allies at the point of the Bulge only had the Airborne divisions as a reserve.

Here's a fun layout of carrier strengths supposing the Japanese had wiped out the US at Midway.

Using the same criteria as above. (Which excludes Ranger and anything not able to make 28 knots or both launch and recover aircraft, otherwise this gets really nasty.) Say they bit off an extra carrier at Midway. We'll say...Hornet, perhaps.

Saratoga (88), Wasp (76), Enterprise (85), grand total of 249 aircraft.

Meanwhile we'll give them back one of the IJN's carriers, say, Akagi (Dick Best missed in this reality), and Hiryu to do it.

Zuikaku (84), Shokaku (84), Ryujo (38), Zuiho (30), Hiryu (73), Akagi (91), grand total of 400 aircraft.

By January 1st 1943, the United States has added Essex, Princeton, and Independence, with another 148 aircraft for a grand total of 397 aircraft. The IJN has received no new fleet carriers.

By 7/1/43, the United States has further added Bunker Hill, Yorktown II, Lexington II, Intrepid, and five light carriers of the Independence class, for another 529 aircraft and a grand total of 926. The IJN still has not commissioned a new fleet-capable carrier and remains at 400 aircraft. (They will not commission a new fleet carrier until Chitose, in November. She and her sister Chiyoda, which will be ready in December, will carry a mere 60 aircraft combined.)

But it's worse than it looks. The US ships are mechanically superior in pretty much every way. US doctrine regarding antiaircraft defense, damage control, and even basic shiphandling as part of a task force is markedly superior. Japan's one doctrinal advantage, being able to successfully mass aircraft from multiple carriers into coherent strikes from long practice, will have been matched. Japan's love of complex maneuvers and dispersed forces mean that even when outnumbered US carrier forces can hit and run, taking on small groups of Japanese carriers that are isolated. By early 1943 the US is issuing the new Avengers (which first saw action at Midway) and Hellcats to carrier air groups, meaning they have erased the Zero's margin of superiority and presented it with a lineup of strike aircraft that can run the defending Zeros of useful ammo very quickly, as only their cannons are truly sufficient to damage an aircraft like an Avenger or Hellcat and they only have sixty rounds.

During the entire war, Japan would build only one carrier truly fit to fight an Essex, Taiho.

[StarSlayer]

Yep, that makes since, factor in the fact that the aircraft available are being flown by an increasingly less skilled pool of pilots and it gets even worse.

[Grizzly]

That might explain the Hellcat's 19:1 K:D ratio.

(Honestly, that's one INSANE ratio...)

[MP-Ryan]

It's worth noting that Japan knew full well before the attack on Pearl that it could not hold the Pacific theatre or beat the combined Allied forces on the sea.  Japan's strategy going into the war was to strike a devastating blow, grab as much territory as possible, and then fight to a point where the Allies would be willing to make concessions and allow Japan to retain control of the Chinese territories it captured, while returning the other areas taken in the war.  The pre-war strategy had no real belief that they would be able to retain territorial expansions, but planned to use them as throw-away bargaining chips in a conditional peace settlement.

That plan hinged on two issues:  the destruction of the US naval airforce at Pearl, and the prediction that this would knock the US effectively out-of-theatre for between 6 and 12 months.  As we all well know, they failed, which prevented them from establishing enough territory expansion and resource acquisition to hold a position and allow for a peace settlement.  They also failed to predict just how much the attack on Pearl would piss off the US.

Even Japan knew that the Pacific war was lost well before it even started; they simply attempted to use it as a pretex to make land grabs in mainland Asia.  The conflict wasn't necessarily folly - had the Japanese strategy worked, they would still likely possess a large chunk of what is presently China - but the strategy didn't anticipate a couple of crucial developments.  They took a gamble, and it bit them square on the ass.

[Nuke]

That might explain the Hellcat's 19:1 K:D ratio.

(Honestly, that's one INSANE ratio...)

the zero was more maneuverable in the horizontal. but a hellcat can maneuver well in the vertical. zero is too light so it has trouble with diving, it doesnt like going too fast, and the engine is so weak it cant climb quickly, granted it could out turn anything we had. so if you were in a hellcat and had a zero on your six, all you had to do was climb or dive to evade. our planes were so well built and had so many backup systems and more armor, and only the 20mm cannons could scratch it. where as the zero was essentially like shooting at cardboard, and your six pack of .50 cals is all youd ever need. it was a good plane early on, its just that we made better planes as the war progressed.

[NGTM-1R]

The conflict wasn't necessarily folly - had the Japanese strategy worked, they would still likely possess a large chunk of what is presently China - but the strategy didn't anticipate a couple of crucial developments.  They took a gamble, and it bit them square on the ass.

Quite the contrary, the conflict was folly. The United States' support for British and Dutch imperial holdings in Asia was slim to none, and using it as a casus belli would have been nearly impossible in the political climate pre-Pearl Harbor. It is entirely possible that Japan did not have to fight the United States to accomplish their war aims.

But the Navy had become rather unhealthily fixated upon a war with the US back in the '20s. Even so, there was a chance they could still have fought the war they desired to fight...if they hadn't attacked Pearl Harbor. But Yamamoto hijacked the strategic planning process with his threat to resign if not allowed to carry out the operation, and in so doing signed the death warrant of his service and very nearly his country.

If you want to fight a limited war, you don't include people who don't directly own things you need, and you don't attack things that will provoke an unlimited response. Japan's stated strategy and its actual actions were completely out of synch. Midway in a very real sense came about from the realization of this, with Combined Fleet going for the "Decisive Battle" because they didn't know what else to do.