Ian Hamilton could also do nothing when the ANZAC's arrived as they landed on the wrong beach. Which was steep, and rugged and the soldiers had no idea what to do as they had no idea where they were. Although lack of communication was a factor of the failure it was also other issues and Ian Hamilton

The Brits weren't even an hour away from the Anzacs merely a few
k's away which I could run in 10 minutes. The Turks also were in between Sulva Bay and Anzac cove so

Get your facts right
you insult Aussies

Nonsense. The A6M was a rude shock to Allied pilots, but USN pilots learned to deal with it just fine. At war's end, Wildcats certainly had shot down a lot more Zekes than Wildcats were lost to Zekes.

whale

Bush 2 never left the states and Lincoln admitted that during his time in the Illinois militia during the Blackhawk War, the most danger that he was ever in was from the mosquitoes. Neither of which can be described as serving with distinction.

James Madison is the only President to have ever taken active part in a battle when he and his cabinet took over an abandoned artillery piece for a very short period during the Battle of Bladensburg before deciding that discretion is the better part of valor and leaving the field.

whale

By the way, a young Scipio was at Cannae and was one of the few to escape. It wasn't until later that he went to Spain to try to turn the war around. For a long while after Cannae [and Trasimine for that matter] Rome was in grave danger and the people of Rome knew it.

Even in the mechanized slaughter of WWI I don't think there was any occasion when 50,000 soldiers were killed in a single day. It may still be a record. At the Battle of the Somme in WWI the Brits lost about 20,000 killed on the first day, and that was probably the worst single day for the Brits.

Consider that he had ample warning that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor and various other locations in the Pacific and yet he still managed to have the vast majority of his air force wiped out on the ground.

He pre-positioned supply dumps in locations that were conspicuous to the enemy, not ewasily defended and not easily relocated, thus depriving his men of food, water and ammunition after only a few weeks' fighting.

I don't think that anyone could argue that he was dealt a losing hand. The US did have plans to reinforce the Philippines, but not until mid-1942 at the very earliest (more likely date was late '42 to early '43), but he certainly could have done better than he ultimately did.

Destroying the tanks would have been secondary to causing them to leak the vast amount of oil that had been painstakingly brought from the US mainland to the Hawaiian islands over several years. Once the tanks were damaged enough to leak, whatever oil escaped confinement would have been irrecoverable. This target, by itself, warranted a third strike and, had it been successful, would have extended the war by years.

I would agree that a third wave would have been met with a more vigorous US response. In fact, the second wave had encountered more resistance and lost more than the Japanese expected, based on damage reports. But the fact was that the US air assets were essentially wiped out and AA fire, though voluminous, was notoriously inaccurate. If memory serves, after the second wave returned, Nagumo's carries still held some 300 combat-capable aircraft. Losing a third of them in exchange for a Pearl Harbor devoid of oil, repair facilities and maybe with a large ship sunk in the main channel would have been a more than fair trade.

As for the attacking being "poorly planned" and "poorly executed", I think you would be practically alone in that assessment. Mistakes were made, but they were made almost exclusively by the American commanders, both on the scene in Hawaii and in Washington. Yammamoto based the attack at least in part on the British success at Taranto against the Italian navy, while American commanders ignored the raid.. American commanders thought that Pearl Harbor was too shallow for torpedo attacks ,ignoring the possibility that not everyone agreed (and the US did have nets available but chose not to use them. Gen. Short, the US army commander, knew that diplomatic relations with Japan were on the verge of "rupturing" and also knew that Japan tended to start wars with a surprise attack, yet he took steps to guard only against sabotage, not attack. There were not enough search aircraft to adequately patrol the 270 degree arc around Oahu which presented the most likely directions of attack. Pilots did, in fact, have individual targets, having been shown a sand table diorama of Pearl Harbor with mooring locations of various types of ships clearly marked. They were told to attack carriers first, then battleships, then smaller craft and to make exceptions for ships attempting to sortie. I grant the mistake on the flare signals but that might be the only mistake the Japanese made until the decision not to launch a third wave.