What was Yamamoto's objective at Pearl Harbor?
1 Answer
Probably to annihilate the entire US fleet in one go leaving the Americans without weapons to fight for a long time and so allowing Japan to conquer and consolidate a protective ring around their main conquests.
Explanation:
Military, the attack at Pearl Harbor was really a kind of preemptive strike aimed at eliminating and limiting any reaction capability of the enemy destroying its entire fleet.
Yamamoto probably knew that it was only a gamble and that the immense industrial might of the USA would, at the end, catch up with the losses but he thought that the attack could destroy enough ships to make the Pacific Fleet useless and so obtain a settled peace. The time obtained, because of the impossibility for the US fleet to intervene, could also be used to attain the objectives of Japan's military strategists presenting the Americans with a situation of dominance in the Pacific that could be challenged with great difficulty (and losses).
Unfortunately for Yamamoto the time and enemy were quite different from the similar enemy that Japan defeated 40 years before, the Russians, when Admiral Togo in only one battle, at Tsushima, destroyed the entire Baltic Fleet and forced the Russians to sue for peace.
Another big problem was that Yamamoto failed to sink the carriers that were, at that moment, becoming the real protagonists of naval warfare.
[Carrier USS Enterprise the survivor of Pearl Harbor and the symbol of the "fight back" spirit of the US fleet]
