Did Japan actually have a decent chance vs. the USA in WWII?

by Cannotholdme
bug-hunter

Not even close.

The Japanese completely ignored the fact that barring the invasion and subjugation of the Hawaiian islands, every other victory they could have in the Pacific was a nuisance to the Americans.

Their army was simply not large enough to subdue China, the Philippines, other Pacific islands, fend off the Australians and New Zealanders, and hold down Hawaiii, even if they could supply it, which they couldn't.

From a fleet standpoint, the Japanese essentially lost the war at Midway, seeing as they would need a numerical carrier advantage to pose any real threat. Once they fell behind, they were at the mercy of America's industrial might. The US produced 22 fleet carriers during WWII, and 141 total carriers, vs. 16 for Japan [source]. They vastly outproduced the Japanese in every possible facet during the war. Also, their aircraft designs played to the advantages of numerical superiority - Wildcats and Hellcats, once they perfected group dogfighting tactics, were better than Zeroes.

The other problem was that Japanese war materiel required imports, which the US Navy choked off with submarines and aircraft. The Japanese built about 4 million tons of merchant marine capacity during the war, but submarines sunk about 5 million alone - meaning that Japan lost nearly everything it had at the start of the war as well as what it built. This choked off what was left of Japanese industry.

Kage-Taro

It depends what you mean by 'decent chance'. If you mean 'decent chance to conquer the US' then the answer is probably no. If you mean 'decent chance to achieve their war aims' the answer is more complex.

Most of the answers here focus on the US's staggering advantage in medium / long term industrial capacity. However this ignores that this is exactly the kind of war Japan was planning NOT to fight!

Japan's aim in attacking the US was a to inflict a single stunningly decisive defeat which would:

a) Stop the US having the local naval power to interfere with Japan's expansion in Asia until it was too late.

b) Break the will of the US to engage in a long, costly war which Japan would very likely ultimately lose.

c) Thereby gain a favourable negotiated settlement.

If Japan had have:

a) Sunk the US Fleet Carriers at Pearl Harbour

b) Followed up the attack on Pearl Harbour with a ground invasion (which would have been logistically difficult*)

c) Decisively won either the Battle of the Coral Sea or the Battle of Midway by sinking a lot of US Carriers

They would have had the decisive victory they desired. All three of these were in the realm of reasonable possibility. How possible gets into a lot of historical what if scenario's which are beyond the scope of this sub.

Similarly, whether such a defeat would have had the desired effect on the US appetite for war is complete conjecture as well, though I'm sure it is easy to form your own opinion on that.

[edit] *difficult is likely an understatement, an invasion was probably practically impossible as xaxers points out below.

panzerkampfwagen

The war in the Pacific was one of control of islands. To do that you needed to control the seas. To control the seas you needed a strong navy. The backbone of the navies in the Pacific during WW2 was the aircraft carrier.

Between June 1941 and April 1945, 78 escort carriers would be built and launched

http://www.navy.mil/navydata/nav_legacy.asp?id=3

From that, and what follows, you can see that the US escort carrier fleet outnumbered the Japanese total aircraft carrier of all types fleet. That's not even counting the other US carriers.

Using these other pages from navy.mil

http://www.navy.mil/navydata/nav_legacy.asp?id=2

http://www.navy.mil/navydata/nav_legacy.asp?id=16

http://www.navy.mil/navydata/nav_legacy.asp?id=17

You can see that the US produced carrier after carrier after carrier of fleet carriers and other types as well.

Unfortunately I don't have a great website for a list of Japanese aircraft carriers so I'm going to use this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ships_of_the_Japanese_Navy#Aircraft_carriers

I know it's wikipedia but it seems ok for lists.

From that you can see that Japan wasn't just outnumbered in aircraft carriers but the US vastly outnumbered Japan in numbers of aircraft carriers. Japan was no where close to the US in naval strength over the course of the war. That seems to suggest that they didn't have much of a chance.

Georgy_K_Zhukov

Hey. I'm sorry to do this, but I've removed the topic. While there may be a legitimate answer to be made on this about the relative capacities of the opposing powers, the reality is that this question is really just "WhatIf" bait, which we ask to be directed to /r/HistoricalWhatIf. I hope what answers you got so far are useful to you, but I would suggest pursuing this further there.