Blunders

WW2 hmm so many hitler blunders,

1.kursk (effectivley crushed the german army)

2.stalingrad/battle of britain(bombing london and not airfeild)/Dunkirk/battle of kiev(missed oppurunity to take moscow but crushed a large russian force)

pre WW2 number one blunder .prob battle of TU' fortress where half a million ming troops were lead into mongolia by a eunuch and the mongols cut off there supplys and surrounded them...mongols numberd something under 70.000

The US carriers were not the targets of the Japanese. The American battle ships were. The Japanese had pictures of all the major American battleships because they were the main target, not the carriers.

Japan had built many battleships leading up to the war. they knew carriers would be used, but not in the intensity that they would. They didn't forsee that the US Navy would base everything around them, they thought battleships would be used to a much larger degree. Well, they were wrong. had the American carriers been at Pearl at the time, they would have been hit as everything in the water was pretty much hit. But once again....they were not the target, the battle ships and heavy cruiers were.

All in all....the Japanese did not understand US Navy tactics (this is evident as the Japanese did not win one major naval battle against the US) and really ended up giving the US a reason to enter the war and a reason to come after Japan.

and also....as Mobius mentioned above, Dunkirk was  major blunder by the Axis. Anotehr reason why Hitler was a horrible war-time commander.