Incidentally, one of the tags on Pixiv is "American Empire", a joke reference to players who play Kantai Collection through spending lots of money for resources (and referencing the "unfair" advantage America had in resources during WW2).

Yanks are always generous.

I wouldn't say having literally ten times the landmass of Japan with a similar population ratio Unfair...

Honestly you can not expect to sucker punch a gaint and not get you ass beated around the block several times. Then complain when he adds a several more blocks after telling him no when he ask if you want him to stop...

Iowa is a true American indeed!

armory18 said:
I wouldn't say having literally ten times the landmass of Japan with a similar population ratio Unfair...
Honestly you can not expect to sucker punch a gaint and not get you ass beated around the block several times. Then complain when he adds a several more blocks after telling him no when he ask if you want him to stop...

The person who came up with the plan for Japan's Pacific operations in WWII knew that there was no way to have a truly sustainable protracted conflict with the United States. The idea was to deliver him a demoralizing, crippling blow, and grab up and fortify enough Pacific territory as quickly as possible while he was staggered. Then, when the Yanks were back on their feet, hope they push for a treaty due to the combined anti-war sentiments of the times and the expectation of a uphill slugfest otherwise. That blow was supposed to happen in Hawaii's port, by unexpectedly sinking the American fleet. Oil fields and (to-be-constructed) air fields in the surrounding regions were the fortifications.

Much to the plan's dismay, even the first step went awry as the United States's carriers weren't in port at the time of the strike. Even after the United States declared war rather than reel, the rest of the plan also didn't go perfectly downhill until a short while after.

I wonder if the German shipgirls would know about the Berlin Airlift....as this reminds me of it.

FJH said:

The person who came up with the plan for Japan's Pacific operations in WWII knew that there was no way to have a truly sustainable protracted conflict with the United States. The idea was to deliver him a demoralizing, crippling blow, and grab up and fortify enough Pacific territory as quickly as possible while he was staggered. Then, when the Yanks were back on their feet, hope they push for a treaty due to the combined anti-war sentiments of the times and the expectation of a uphill slugfest otherwise. That blow was supposed to happen in Hawaii's port, by unexpectedly sinking the American fleet. Oil fields and (to-be-constructed) air fields in the surrounding regions were the fortifications.

Much to the plan's dismay, even the first step went awry as the United States's carriers weren't in port at the time of the strike. Even after the United States declared war rather than reel, the rest of the plan also didn't go perfectly downhill until a short while after.

Well, the Japanese had a pretty spectacular string of successes early on, before the United States could really get its shit together around Coral Sea, including some absolutely humiliating defeats like Battle of Java Sea or the invasion of the Philipines. The whole plan was basically to take a lot of territory really fast, demoralize the enemy, and get the enemy to give up some of that land in a peace deal.

The key part was that all those oil fields and air fields were on land the Japanese didn't even have until after they conquered it in a lightning-fast expansion. In fact, not having any access to oil after America embargoed them (to stop Japanese expansion through China) was THE reason Japan was desperate enough to attempt to fight America in the first place.

I remember one of the insights into Japanese strategy throughout the war was that they were constantly trying to create way-too-complicated plans with too many possible points of failure to try to compensate for their obvious difference in raw power. (For example, the Battle of Leyte Gulf entirely depended upon the Americans chasing a decoy fleet in the north while the two real threats sailed from the west and south... and because of a storm, the Americans didn't find the decoy, but because of submarines, DID find the real threat fleets, so it was a failed plan before they even met the enemy, and only Halsey somehow falling for a trap he'd already avoided gave the Japanese any prayer of success.) These were all reckless gambles, but they were all reckless gambles they had to take because NOT trying to take a huge gamble and hoping for the best was just marching into the jaws of defeat willingly. But like a gambler who's behind, their only option was to keep taking more and more desperate gambles even as they proved more and more costly.

Should we put this on Defeating the Purpose (of the event/game)?