[temujin77]

Originally Posted by jdbeatty

Yup. Big. Impressive. And essentially a waste of resources.

The samurai missed the only chance they had of using their huge battle line to actually influence the course of the war: Midway.

Think about it: Four Japanese carriers sunk but the largest battle fleet in the Pacific on the way behind. Two surviving American carriers with battered and exhausted air groups short on ammunition and fuel escorted by a handful of treaty cruisers and prewar destroyers.

Why didn't the samurai just go after the carriers with their surface fleet? What was to stop them? The American carriers weren't that much faster, if they were faster at all. They could have been pursued all the way back to Pearl and shot to pieces there and the US had nothing to stop them.

Why didn't they? Loss of nerve? If so, so much for the legendary samurai courage against impossible odds. Loss of face because of the destruction of the carriers? Unlikely. True samurai warriors would be proud to have fought on despite grevious losses.

More likely lack of strategic vision. When the Midway plan was...wait, not derailed because the carriers were gone, no...DISCREDITED, someone had to be blamed for the failure of the plan, So the plan was stopped and the samurai went back to reevaluate it.

Postwar apologists simple said that it failed because the carriers were gone. No, not really. The carriers were only there in the event the American carriers came out. Well, they did that, and the American flattops were worn to a frazzle.

Which had nothing to do with Midway. The landings might have proceeded, perhaps with greater losses, but losses are scorned by true samurai. And the battle fleet might have pursued the pitiful remnants of the American Pacific Fleet to destruction.

Why didn't that happen? Original plan didn't work that way, that's why, and the samurai were essentially incapable of improvising.

Which brings us back to the impressive but useless battleships of the Yamato class. Useless because the samurai were afraid to use them, or needed elaborate plans to do so.

Most likely the latter, but with elements of the former. And in the event the distinction is meaningless since the fact was that the samurai didn't use the monsters for anything other than bomb magnets.

Lots of great points there, jdbeatty. A little bit of Monday morning quarterback, though?