I’m not suggesting they could have successfully kept any territory, but was a landing and even a short-term occupation of some part of the country plausible, or was it logistically impossible? I seem to recall reading that there was a lot of fear of a Japanese attack on Australia and bombing raids, but no real push because the Japanese thought it wasn’t a realistic use of their resources. Were they right?
I’m not an expert, so I don’t know how accurate it is, but there’s a Wikipedia article on the proposed Japanese invasion of Australia during WWII. Points of interest in that article:
- The Imperial Navy thought it could be done. The Army was skeptical. The Army won out.
- After the war, Prime Minister Tojo said that “we never had enough troops to [invade Australia]. … We expected to occupy all New Guinea, to maintain Rabaul as a holding base, and to raid Northern Australia by air. But actual physical invasion—no, at no time.”
- A small reconnaissance unit actually did land on the mainland, in what is now Prince Regent National Park, for a couple of days in 1944. They were investigating reports of Allied bases being built, but found (then, as now) little human habitation in the area.
While the citizens of the northern half of Australia (and many in the south) certainly felt so at the time, there were many obstacles the Japanese would have to overcome to do a meaningful or worthwhile landing.
Firstly, northern Australia - lets say north of Tropic of Capricorn - has Darwin at the middle of the top and then smaller ports on the western and eastern coasts, with lots and lots of nothing in between. Seizing Darwin or another port did not give you easy access to much else. You couldn’t even trash the port because you needed it yourself.
Once there, there isn’t a lot of living off the land possible. It would require a substantial landing of supplies, munitions etc to sustain resistance or launch further assaults. An airfield would be handy but its between 1,000-2,000 km to springboard to the nearest towns with a two-storey building. Their fuel supply line would have thousands of kilometres to be secured just to get to the next town. All of Australia’s war industry, such as it was, was focussed in the south and would not be disrupted.
Securing a sea link back to island Southeast Asia for essential supply would have required diverting a substantial naval force from the Pacific theatre or other uses. There were quite large defence forces, including armoured units retained or being grown in Australia which did not get sent overseas, and presumably could have been deployed against a seized port.
Maybe not insuperable problems if there was a clear military objective or benefit. It might have diverted Allied troops from the Pacific or North Africa, but that sort of new front thing was tried at Gallipoli and didn’t go well.
Define short term.
Australia is a big country and theoretically they could have snuck in a battalion or so somewhere in the north and let them dig in and die, but they simply could not have had a meaningful occupation of anything militarily significant for any length of time.
The “easiest” thing to have done was to land at some point ono the east coast where a port could be established with the goal of putting in an air base for recon and attacks on targets along and offshore of that coast. Lots of problems there.
If you airbase can attack some interesting points then it can be attacked by planes from airbases at those points. Note the singular vs. plural nature of the airbases.
Also, securing a large enough perimeter to prevent artillery attacks on the airbase and port would require a lot of infantry.
Supplying the base would be a big problem with opposing naval forces being in a better position and the long distances involved. And then there’s the Great Barrier Reef. You just can’t send a fleet in from the Pacific at a random route. You’re going to be spotted, there’s limited room for large scale maneuvers, etc.
The Imperial Army’s reply to the Navy’s proposal to occupy an enclave in Northern Australia was more than skepticism, it was politely telling the Navy to go fuck itself. The Navy proposed during planning in December 1941 that it could be done with 3 divisions, to which the Army responded with its calculation that 10 divisions would be needed, along with 2 million tons of merchant shipping. The entire Japanese merchant fleet totaled 6 million tons, 2 million tons of it couldn’t be freed up without diverting it from something vital, like supplying the planned needed offensives to secure Southeast Asia and the outer defensive perimeter or keeping the Japanese economy running. The 10 divisions that the Army insisted would be needed was a force that simply did not exist. Everything that Japan conquered in its opening moves from December 1941 through April 1942 was done with less than 10 divisions.
Technically, Japan /did/ invade Australia. Papua was part of Australia at the time.
It’s interesting to think about what the American reaction would have been if Hawaii was invaded. Would that have been different to the invasion of the Philippines and the invasion of Alaska?
And although discussion always tends to be about invasion of the Northern Territory (like Alaska, and Hawaii and Papua, not a state), the American/Australian response to the invasion was managed out of Brisbane, and when I first landed in PNG, we flew out of Cairns.
Anyway, thinking at the time was that Japan /could not/ capture Singapore. And the advance down the Malayan peninsula itself only happened because of the collapse of the incompetent defense, and the bombing of Darwin followed the same pattern of incompetence as the prior bombing of Hawaii and of Clark Field – caught by surprise after being warned of incoming bombers. Clark Field happened hours after Hawaii. Darwin was told there were incoming bombers, and it happened after both prior examples.
So civilian Australians weren’t just thinking about the capability of Japan to land in continental Austrlia as a forward defense – they were thinking about the inability of Aus/English military to mount any kind of meaningful defense. Land on Northern Queensland, bicycle down south, take the impregnable fortress Brisbane – yeah, like that’s “impossible”, even if the troops hadn’t been already sent away to Singapore and Timor and Europe.
After the war, there were politically motivated claims that Aus planned to abandon Northern Queensland down to Brisbane. It wasn’t true, but the fact that it was credible to a bunch of politically naive voters shows what the Australians at the time thought of their own defense force.
That went a bit off topic.
Anyway: The Navy thought it could be done with 3 divisions, the Army thought it would require 10 divisions.
Apart from the fact that the Army and Navy hated each other and disagreed as a matter of principle, it turned out that Malaysia and Singapore would have required much less force than predicted, and PNG required much more force than predicted, and supply even of PNG was inadequate and later failed.
I think that movement in Northern Queensland, at the right time of year, would be more like Malaysia and less like PNG. Capture of Queensland down to Brisbane would have been much easier that feared, and that, having got to Brisbane, the effort would have collapsed in failure almost immediately due to lack of supply.
It’s now well accepted the Japan never planned to invade mainland Australia: the question about ‘could’ they have done it is perhaps unanswerable, but I can’t see them having done it successfully: but the same is true of course, about even their conquest of Korea: ultimately, it was unsuccessful.
Not at all. There were a number of factors why this is not at all a realistic scenario.
First, it has to be appreciated that starting in the summer of '42, the Allies were in a completely different situation than they were in late '41 through the spring of '42.
When the war broke out, the Allies were completely unprepared, poorly led and had entirely failed to appreciate the actual threat Japan represented. Most of the Allies’ aircraft were obsolete and outclassed by the Zero.
The Allied navies were unprepared to take on the Imperial Japan Navy (IJN), and suffered a series of ignominious defeats in the attempted defense of the Dutch East Indies. In the campaign, the Japanese did the same “island hopping” strategy of building air bases and attacking within the cover of planes. Then, they would build the next air bases and move forward.
This was in addition to defeats in Malay, Singapore, PI, PNG and the Bismarck Archipelago. (Nothing could have saved HK, Wake and Guam.)
This takes us to May, 1942 and often overlooked strategic defeat of Japan in the Battle of the Coral Sea, when they were forced to turn back, including the transport ships with troops prepared to attack Port Moresby.
In the historical timeline, the US invades Guadalcanal in August, 1942 and the Japanese are unable to kick the Marines off, and weren’t able to adequately supply their own troops on the island.
Although the US had to scrap together the various odds and bits for the initial invasion of Guadalcanal, (It was informally nicknamed Operation Shoestring because it was woefully lacking in everything), the Japanese did worse.
Despite Guadalcanal being within bombing distance of the major Japanese base in Rabaul, the US was able to complete the airstrip and keep it supplied, giving the US daytime air superiority.
Without adequate air support, the Japanese to abandon their efforts to resupply with slow cargo ships.
Instead, they were forced to resupply by convoys of fast destroyers dropping off supplies in steel drums in the middle of the night and hoping the ground troops could retrieve them. This was by the end of August, 1942.
The problem is that by August, 1942, the Japanese couldn’t even adequately sustain a campaign in the Solomons. Allied air power was stronger and the Japanese lacked the logistics and naval power to support the island.
It is highly unlikely that the Japanese could have taken Port Moresby, even if the US hadn’t been aware of their plans and came to do battle. They only brought 5,000 troops, and didn’t have sufficient materiel to defeat the Allies.
By this point, the Allies had sufficient airplanes for reconnaissance, improved fighters, enough air bases in the area, better prepared troops and better leadership (as compared to earlier in the war).
They could drop off the 5,000 troops, but wouldn’t be able to resupply them. They didn’t have enough air bases to provide CAP for cargo ships.
Ignoring reality for the moment, let’s let them have Port Moresby. There simply wouldn’t be a way to cross over to Australia.
An invasion of Australia would have been at least an order of magnitude more difficult and resupply would have been two orders of magnitude. The closer they came to Australia, the longer their supply chain and the shorter of that for the Allies. The more difficult it would be for the Japanese to project air power and the easier for the Allies.
It is answerable, and the answer is “no.”
The reason that the Japanese were able to ride bicycles down the Malay Peninsula and into Singapore was that they caught the British by surprised and managed to destroy the RAF and FAAR. It didn’t help that the Allies had obsolete Brewster F2A Buffalos and the pilots lacked training.
Without air cover, any preparation or competent leadership, the British and Australian forces were caught completely off guard.
In contrast, by the summer of '42, the Allies had modern fighters and would have had air supremacy in Australia.
(Of course, the IJA wouldn’t have been able to land troops in Northern Queensland, but let’s magically land some there.)
Good luck riding bikes from Northern Queensland to Brisbane. Without AA, tanks
or even trucks, troops on bikes in open terrain are going to get slaughtered from the air.
I vaguely recall as a child my parents took us to see a movie (mid-60’s?) that the background of the story was drama during the trek when the people in northern Australia were evacuating to the south out of fear of a Japanese invaision.
That was probably based on the panic that happened after the bombing of Darwin - one suggestion as to how it happened was that some Air Force personnel (non-combatabt) were told to meet at a rendezvous outside the air base - which meant that they were seen by the civilian population as fleeing the scens. Rumour spread - many civilians packed up and moved out.
For the same reasons that Australia couldn’t have been invaded, Hawaii could not have either. In fact it would be that much harder.
In December, 1941, the US Army had 25,000 troops in Hawaii. Japan simply lacked the ability to bring sufficient troops and supplies and couldn’t provide enough air cover for an invasion.
The US public reacted really strongly to the attack on Pearl Harbor. Lots of men volunteered for the armed forces in the immediate aftermath.
There were panics in some of the Western states as well…
Actually, many people within the USN were pretty shook up as well, and it wasn’t until Guadalcanal that an Allied army was able to stop the IJA.
Well, since you’re being pedantic, the question is answerable, and the answer is “yes”. They could have invaded, and they would have met with the same failure they had in PNG and in Honshu.
Japan chose not invade mainland Australia. There’s no other hard line between the invasion of PNG – unsuccessful, inadequate, unsupplied – and the potential invasion of mainland Australia – unsuccessful, inadequate and unsupplied.
Putting that aside, PNG was significantly more difficult than the Japanese predicted. Malaysia was significantly easier. The geography of Northern Queensland would be more like Malaysia, and less like PNG. Also, I don’t accept a assertion that Aus would have had magically better supply in July. Once you get down to Brisbane, the railway to Sydney and Melbourne and Adelaide and Perth would have been able to pump supplies up to the front. Above Brisbane, Australia didn’t have an effective supply capability. That’s why the defense of Papua was mounted out of Brisbane, not Cairns.
Except for the Battle of Milne Bay, when Australian troops successfully fought off a Japanese invasion. But it only counts when it’s Americans doing it, right?
The end of the Guadalcanal (7 August 1942 to 9 February 1943) didn’t happen until months later, but the early actions predated the Battle of Milne Bay (25 August – 7 September 1942).
Some people argue for Milne Bay as the first complete battle in which the Japanese were defeated, while others point to the early actions on Guadalcana as they predate the former.
Although I didn’t mention it in the previous posts, the Kokoda Track Campaign was actually an even worse experience for the troops on the ground, and is often said to be the worse conditions for fighting in the entire war.
Although the Australians (under the ultimate command of McArthur) eventually did defeat the Japanese, they were still going backwards by the time Guadalcanal and Milne Bay happened.
Kokoda Track gets the short stick in history not only because McArthur kept referring to the Australians as “Allied forces” and the simple fact that Guadalcanal was fought by the Americans, but overall the later was a much more significant campaign, with multiple naval battles and the running air battles with large losses of both sides. Both of those were the start of the meat grinder which eventually wore down the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy.
It is good that you brought up Milne Bay, because it shows the difference in how the Australians were able to handle the Japanese compared to the early war, and why an attempted invasion of Australia would have been impossible.
From the link:
My bolding.
Among many other things, the ability of the Allies to have air superiority changed from the early days of the war.
This is what I was trying to say in my earlier posts.
Any attempted invasion of Australia would have been even more lopsided as the Japanese would have been that much further away for both shipping and air support.
Honshu? The Japanese invaded their main island?
You didn’t address the issues of air support or shipping.
This seems to have been the basic problem - logistics. Not that Japanese military leaders were fully aware of the seriousness of the problem, or they wouldn’t have allowed Yamamoto to coerce them into the Midway campaign (Midway if captured would’ve been a major continuing drain on their resources).
Yes, exactly right about this. Logistics were one of the basic problems.
As @Dissonance noted above, the Japanese started off the war with only 6 million tons of merchant shipping, and the IJA immediately requisitioned a large chuck of that for the initial invasions. They were supposed to release it all back but things happened.
Hand in hand with the problem of logistics, as Japan expanded past the inner areas, they lost their ability to provide air support. Without this air support, they were even more unable to move troops and materiel.
The Allies were unable to counter the Japan air power in the early days, but by mid 1942, the Japanese were unable to provide air cover for their expanded operations.
I haven’t addressed the question of air support because I don’t know enough to have an opinion.
I have repeatedly addressed the issue of shipping. Japan did not have enough shipping to support an attack on Northern Queensland: Australia did not have enough shipping to support a defense of Northern Queensland. I don’t think I can be any possibly clearer about that, so I’m not going to say it again.
The point about Honshu is that the Japanese lost, at all points. Yes, we know that Japan did not have the resources and industrial muscle to defeat the United States. Using that as an absolute leads to the conclusion that “Japan could not attack Hawaii”, and is of similar interest.
My opinion (and I’ve seen nothing here to change it), is that Japan would have been defeated even if they had chosen to invade mainland Australia.
Given the absolute necessity of air support for invasions, then there really isn’t a discussion.
WWII without the air war is as realistic a scenario as introducing killer lasers from space so ignoring the effect of the former or introducing the latter goes beyond anything that can be discussed in FQ.