Hard to be sure but I would love your perspective on the how and why if you ever get the chance. It's a fascinating area for me and I learn more and more from folk about it every year.
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What SADShooter wrote.
Also, the USA would have made good the losses PDQ.
http://www.combinedfleet.com/economic.htmGawk at the "Warship Production" table. See the column header "CV/CVL/CVE"? Those are aircraft carriers of all sorts. America produced 141 during WW2. Japan produced 17. By the end of 1942, the USA would have made good the losses of carriers at Pearl.
...the majority of the carriers listed in the U.S. totals were 'Jeep' carriers, CVEs carrying a couple dozen aircraft and suitable mostly for escort duties rather than front-line combat (which didn't subtract a whit from their effectiveness as antisubmarine or ground-support platforms). But it should also be noted that the American CVs on average operated substantially larger air wings than their Japanese counterparts (80-90 vs. 60-70 aircraft). The net result; by 1944, when Task Force 38 or 58 (depending on whether Halsey or Spruance was in charge of the main American carrier force at the moment) came to play, they could be counted upon to bring nearly a thousand combat aircraft with them. That kind of power projection capability was crucial to winning the war -- we could literally bring more aircraft to the party than any island air base could put up in its own defense, as the neutralization of both Truk and the Marshall Islands attests.
Similar stats with cargo ships, destroyers, etc., etc.
Dude goes into a hypothetical. Not "What if the Japs destroyed our Pacific Fleet carriers (
Enterprise, Lexington, & Saratoga) at Pearl?" but,
...what difference would America's economic strength have made if the Americans had lost badly at the Battle of Midway? Let's take the worst case scenario (which, incidentally, was very unlikely, given our advantage of strategic surprise) in which a complete reversal of fortune occurs and the U.S. loses Enterprise, Yorktown, and Hornet, and Japan loses none of the four carriers which were present. After such a hypothetical battle
The question is, would losing Midway really have mattered? How long would it have taken America's shipyards to make good the difference and dig us out of the hole?
Note, we had three fleet carriers out & about in the Pacific when Pearl was attacked and the hypothetical assumes a loss of three fleet carriers.
In other words, even if it had lost catastrophically at the Battle of Midway, the United States Navy still would have broken even with Japan in carriers and naval air power by about September 1943. Nine months later, by the middle of 1944, the U.S. Navy would have enjoyed a nearly two-to-one superiority in carrier aircraft capacity! Not only that, but with her newer, better aircraft designs, the U.S. Navy would have enjoyed not only a substantial numeric, but also a critical qualitative advantage as well, starting in late 1943
Other interesting bits.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_production_during_World_War_II#Naval_forcesIt would have taken longer and been nastier, but the end result would be the same.
Japan was nuts to try to take on a first world country not already in existential extremis. The
Brits could have taken out Japan single-handedly if they were not worried about getting defeated by Germany.
I also think that America would have been even more sore and less willing to defer to FDR and the Brits by prioritizing Europe first.
