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Originally Posted by Mr.Coffee
True but- weren’t the US ships out at sea and therefore missed? If they were docked, coulda been a much different war.
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The carriers were out at sea but even without them (and hindsight) there were more strategically important targets at Pearl than battleships, particularly the drydocks and oil storage facilities. If the Carriers has to operate out of San Diego or San Francisco while fleet maintenance facilities were rebuilt it also would have been a much different war. Say they do get in at Coral Sea but instead the Yorktown has to go to Australia for repair; now they’re fighting Midway with only two carriers. A damaged US Navy operating out of a mostly functioning Pearl Harbor was more dangerous than a full strength Navy and a damaged Pearl Harbor.
Even with the focus on battleship row, three of the ships were back in service within a year, and two more were back in service by the end of the war. So It wasn’t even much of a victory in getting their primary targets taken care of. The Japanese Navy probably would have had better results having the battleships respond to the Philippine invasion and taken them on with their own.