WW2 What If?

[Al B. Sure!]

Since Albie and others are talking about the Pacific Theater, there's a link about the Japanese odds of winning an invasion of Hawaii here, and the OOB of an early loss of the USN carrier force here.

Neither make for happy reading if you think that the Japanese had chances to do much better than they did in the OTL.

OTL?


From the first link, here's a quote, to go back to my response to Solomwi:

In other words, the Japanese had 11 divisions to play with to achieve their objectives in the Pacific. Next, let's examine what it takes to move those forces around. According to Mark Parillo, in "The Japanese Merchant Marine in World War", p.75, at the begining of the war Japan had roughly 6.5 million tons of shipping under her control. At the start of hostilities, the Imperial Army drafted 519 vessels of 2,160,500 tons, two thirds of which (1,450,000 tons worth) were intended for landing purposes. Of that, 1,350,000 tons was earmarked for the Philippines and Malayan operations. The Navy drafted another 1,740,200 tons, most of which was presumably devoted to sustaining the fleet in foreign waters. Thus, nearly 4 million tons of Japan's 6.5 million total tons of shipping was drafted for military purposes, leaving 2.6 million tons for the civilian economy (i.e. the people who make the guns and bullets). Not only that, but the civilian economy actually needed 10 million tons of shipping to supply it, the remainder having been made up before the war by cargo carried in foreign (mostly Allied) cargo ships. So in actuality, the Japan started the war 3.5 million tons in the hole. The Japanese economy was being expected to fight a major, multi-theatre war, while subsisting on 25% of its prewar shipping requirements! Taken as a whole, it is difficult to imagine how Japan could have freed up any additional shipping to increase the potential size of the amphibious pool.

yeah it wasn't Japanese dithering. They didn't have the resources to do anything beyond what they did, even if the US Navy carrier fleet was destroyed.

[Lonestar]

Original Timeline.

[Al B. Sure!]

Original Timeline.

Odd terminology. Whatever happened to "in real life" or "IRL" if you insist on abbreviations that people may not be familiar with? Original timeline sounds like time travelers went back in time and changed it.

[Lonestar]

Odd terminology. Whatever happened to "in real life" or "IRL" if you insist on abbreviations that people may not be familiar with? Original timeline sounds like time travelers went back in time and changed it.

I'm not sure if you've noticed this, but the whole thread presupposes an alternate history.

[giblets]

Spot on. Anyone who said they were surprised by Hitler was either lying or naive.

What, you think ordinary Germans in 1933 were expecting another world war?

[Solomwi]

But is them 'dithering' more a case of the Japanese having had more success than they expected at Pearl and the first few months after Pearl (taking the Philippines, Singapore, Indochina, the East Indies, and islands all around the Pacific all the while fighting a land war in China) and becoming overextended? I don't think it was dithering. I think the Japanese literally had no other targets they could legitimately hit and their supply lines were probably already strained.

So I suspect you're right about destroying the US carrier fleet not making a difference but not because the Imperial Navy was dithering, but because of the limitations of the Japanese Army and Navy at that time.

You missed the point. That Japan dithered with American carriers still at large means they would have dithered at least as much with those carriers sunk, which in turn means that even with the freer hand they would have had, they may have only accomplished as much as they actually did in the period between Pearl and the rebuilding of American offensive naval capability, i.e., the "six months to run wild" Yamamoto promised before the war (I know that's not the exact quote, but it gets the point across). Destroying the carriers wouldn't have ultimately made a difference not because Japan dithered after Pearl, but because the US had so great an ability to replace its losses, in carriers, planes, pilots and crew, and still keep growing the fleet. Ultimately, the two scenarios converge on what actually happened: an American fleet operating in the Pacific that was so overwhelmingly superior to what Japan could field that it could split itself up and still maintain comfortable superiority against both the Japanese fleet and Japanese land-based air simultaneously.

That said, I'd liken the fleet's lack of a directed followup operation to Pearl to a chess player who has thought about his opening move for weeks, but never gave a moment's thought to what his second move would be. Even right after Pearl, Nagumo and the Combined Fleet re-entered Japanese waters on Dec. 23. That's two and a half weeks that planners had to come up with a second move. That they didn't (and part of this was, no doubt, due to IJA primacy) meant that, as Floyd pointed out, elements of the Combined Fleet got sent off more or less willy nilly, from Wake to the Indian Ocean. The IJN admirals forgot their Mahan: keep the fleet together and direct it, to the exclusion of all else, at the top strategic priority, which should have been the destruction of the American fleet, the only Pacific force that posed a threat to Japan's war aims. It took them seven months to devise, design, and execute an operation aimed at the American carriers.

[David Floyd]

Lonestar has handled the questions quite well in my absence overnight, and I have nothing to add other than to say he's absolutely right.

My "hand of God" comment was an analogy - the US as a military and industrial power in the 1940s was simply exponentially beyond any single power or reasonable combination of powers as to render a discussion of who would win absurd.

[kittenOFchaos]

The Germans and Japanese both got carried away.

Having defeated France, Germany secures Eastern Europe and can conduct Barbarossa with the aim of getting a favourable settlement with Russia. After the defeats they suffered early into Barbarossa, the Russians were willing to negociate and a second Treaty of Brest-Litovsk isn't hard to imagine. Of course, if Germany feel confident, they could break this treaty, but have a more forward position and more satellites.

Germany should have simply parried the Uk, put her under pressure in Africa, but avoided confrontation with the USA. The Uk wouldn't be able to invade continental Europe without courting disaster.

As for Japan, attacking the USA was insane. They could have attacked the Dutch East Indies and gained their oil that way. If the USA intervenes (possible), then come to some agreement. Without the attack at Pearl Harbour or the Phillipines, the US President couldn't justify much against Japan. Japan became a powerful economic power despite being obliterated in WW2. Had she kept her pre-WW2 possessions and gained the Dutch East Indies, she'd have had the raw materials to be a super-power.

The Axis pushed too far when they should have looked to consolidate what they already had.

[DaShi]

Japan will be a super power. It gets stronger after each nuclear disaster.

[David Floyd]

As for Japan, attacking the USA was insane. They could have attacked the Dutch East Indies and gained their oil that way. If the USA intervenes (possible), then come to some agreement. Without the attack at Pearl Harbour or the Phillipines, the US President couldn't justify much against Japan. Japan became a powerful economic power despite being obliterated in WW2. Had she kept her pre-WW2 possessions and gained the Dutch East Indies, she'd have had the raw materials to be a super-power.

This can't happen. From the POV of Japan, the US was a hostile power. We had already embargoed scrap metal and oil, and who knew what was next? How can Japan have allowed the US to retain the Philippines along their SLOCs to Malaysia/DEI? The US could have built the Philippines into a fortress, as a knife aimed at Japan's lifeline for raw materials. If Japan was going to war against Britain and the Netherlands, they HAD to find a way to "minimize" the US threat.

Japan truly was in a Kobyashi Maru type scenario. They literally had no way to win, other than capitulating pre-war to Western demands, which putting it mildly was unlikely.

[Al B. Sure!]

Actually, kittenofchaos does bring up an interesting point. I don't know how much support for a war in the Pacific the American people would have given if we were fighting to protect some Dutch colonies in Malaysia. The general American public were very isolationist and we all know from later wars how the American people feel about sending our boys to protect other peoples' economic interests.

Borrow a page from second half of the 20th century wars, and the Japanese might have been better off not striking America.

[David Floyd]

No, he doesn't bring up an interesting point. He brings up a much debunked point. From the point of view of the Japanese, they COULD NOT leave what they viewed (quite rightly) as a potentially hostile power astride the supply lines that ensured their national survival. Simple as that.

They also had the example of the US fighting an undeclared naval war against the U-boats and Lend Lease to the UK and USSR. What would stop the US from doing the same, staged out of the Philippine Islands? Answer: Nothing would have stopped it, and in fact it would have been EXCEEDINGLY LIKELY.

[kittenOFchaos]

Debunked? Given what happened, pretty much any other option was better for Japan. Even giving up all their Chinese ambitions was better than taking on the States.

Those that think Japan had no choice and made the best of a bad situation, need to remind themselves of just how brain-dead a decision the Japanese High Command made.

[David Floyd]

I agree and you agree. But we were not the Imperial Japanese Army in 1941. They were incapable of making the only rational decision, which was withdrawing from China. Y'see, going to war with the US was nuts, and Yamamoto told them so. Staying in China was nuts, because as a result the US cut off Japanese oil.

The only responses they had were a)invading the DEI/Malaysia and taking the oil, or b)withdrawing from China. Option b) wasn't likely to happen, and by not likely I mean not ****ing possible given the attitudes of the time. Given that, the option drilled down to making the best plan possible, and that plan had to include securing their SLOC in the region. That meant invading the Philippine Islands, and that meant finding a way to preclude the US Pacific Fleet from intervening.

So, they made the only decision they could have made.

[giblets]

Wow, FDR made a great decision. If not for that embargo who knows how much more the world would suck.