War Plan Orange
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War Plan Orange was the US Navy war plan for dealing with a possible Japanese attack in the interwar years. The plan anticipated a withholding of supplies from the Philippine Islands and other U.S. outposts in the Western Pacific (they were expected to hold out on their own), while the Pacific Fleet marshaled its strength at bases in California, and guarded against attacks on the Panama Canal. After mobilization (the ships maintained only half their crews in peacetime), the fleet would sail to the Western Pacific to relieve American forces in Guam and the Philippine Islands. Afterwards, the fleet would sail due north for a decisive battle against the Imperial Japanese Navy, and then blockade the Japanese home islands.
The Imperial Japanese Navy developed a counter-plan to allow the US Fleet to sail across the Pacific while using submarines to weaken it. The Japanese fleet would then attempt to force a battle against the US fleet on territory that was favorable to it after the US fleet had been weakened.
War Plan Orange did not envision that aircraft could sink battleships, or that Japan would put the US battleship fleet out of action in an attack on Pearl Harbor. Many have questioned the move by Franklin Delano Roosevelt to send the fleet from California to Hawaii, since when war began it would have to be brought back to California to pick up the other half of the crews (consisting of mobilized reserves and new recruits).
American plans changed after Pearl Harbor demonstrated the dominance of aircraft in naval warfare, and the Japanese had gained air superiority over the Philippines early in the war. Even after severe Japanese defeats like Midway, the US fleet favored a methodical "island-hopping" advance that never took it far beyond land-based air cover.
