Can parallels be drawn between the objectives of Operation Rolling Thunder and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor?

by wintertash
flynavy88

The only parallel you can draw is that both involved air attacks in the hope of preventing the target (North Vietnam or the US) from being able to send men/equipment into battle elsewhere.

The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in the hopes that it would cripple/destroy the US Pacific Fleet to prevent it from interfering in their conquest of the western half of the Pacific long enough that they could consolidate their gains and build up their naval and air forces and form a defensive ring to prevent any American counterattack. It was also hoped that such a crushing blow would shatter American resolve so that they wouldn't try to take back the western Pacific and Dutch East Indies.

Operation Rolling Thunder, however, was a sustained air campaign designed to persuade North Vietnam from supporting the communist insurgency in the South, to destroy North Vietnamese logistics systems, and to cease the flow of men and materiel into the South. It was also hoped to boost South Vietnamese morale.

So if you look at it from a very high level, sure, you could say that both were designed to prevent the other side from getting more involved elsewhere they had interests in. But that is a very very shallow way of approaching it - they were two different types of campaigns and had different targets. The Japanese sought to deal a decisive blow against their rival in support of their conquest of the western Pacific. The Americans sought to sustain a bombing campaign that would break North Vietnamese political support for the Vietcong in the South AND stifle the flow of supplies and men to the South in an attempt to fight the Vietcong which were already in the South.

In the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese managed tactical success though they ultimately failed strategically. In the American campaign, not only did they fail strategically (they never broke the will of the North Vietnamese), they also failed tactically (and by 1968, the flow of men and materiel to the South obviously did not stop as we saw the war escalate into the Tet Offensive of 68).