It's got to hear with another episode of the History Unplugged Podcast.

Before Pearl Harbor, the American military thought that Japan was no threat.

While the United States respected the Japanese military for its rapid innovation, overall

they thought they were daring but incompetent and simply copied Western technology.

This conventional wisdom was completely shattered by December 7, and in the weeks and months

afterwards, the Japanese military became a sort of omnipresent bogeyman to Americans when

he thought that after Hawaii, the entire West Coast could be bombed next.

In most histories of World War II in the Pacific, you learn about Pearl Harbor, then you

jump to the Do Little Raid, and the Battle of Midway in the summer of 1942 when Japanese

expansion in the Pacific has stopped.

But what happened in that six-month period when the US military was completely outgunned,

its Air Force and Navy, a far less experience, or in every sense the underdog?

To discuss this overlooked period is today's guest Brian Herder, author of Early Pacific

Raids 1942, the American Carrier Strike Back.

By February, Admiral Erdice King decided to hit back a Japan's rapidly expanding Pacific

Empire and an effort to keep the Japanese off-bounds.

The hallsy loved the US Pacific Fleet carriers on their first raid, using high-speed hit

run tactics to strike at the Japanese, and at a time when most of the Japanese carrier

fleet was in the Indian Ocean.

The last of the 42 carrier raids, March 1942, would form a defining moment in the Pacific

War, prior to a new phase, high seas battles between the opposing fleets.

This was a time of US innovation, but also incredibly low morale and fear when the Japanese

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