The link below mostly deals with the effectiveness of Japanese torpedoes. Â But the opening paragraphs have a description of the pre-war Japanese strategy, before they decided to do Pearl Harbor. Â It’s interesting reading.
http://www.navweaps.com/index_tech/tech-067.htm
Edit: Sorry. Looking at that article again, it doesn’t give as much detail about the big picture strategy as I remembered. I was confusing it with another article. But the gist of their original strategy was to grab the Philippines and wait for the inevitable American counter-attack. Subs and aircraft carriers were seen as harassment units to whittle down the US as much as possible before the surface units engaged. From there, the article in the link above covers how the surface engagement was supposed to go.
The background on the torpedoes was that the Japanese had the best on the planet. Every other navy’s torpedoes had a range of 3-8 miles, depending on the speed setting. The Japanese Type-93 had a range of about 22 miles on slow setting (which was as fast as the fast setting on most other torpedoes), and a range of about 11 miles on fast setting (which was REALLY fast – like 52 knots or so). Using compressed oxygen instead of compressed air as an oxidizer for the fuel also caused them to have a less visible wake. To top it all off, they also had a heavier warhead than other torpedoes. The Japanese successfully kept the existence of this weapon secret until several months into the war, and built a lot of their naval strategy around it.
