I think this reflects what was the real issue. The American planners were mentally separating peacetime conditions and war conditions. Under war conditions, a military base like Pearl Harbor would be alert and active; it would have air and sea patrols out to spot an incoming attack and its defenses would be armed and ready to defend against that attack. Under peacetime conditions, things settle down to a much more limited training routine - but by definition, attacks don’t occur in peacetime.
What happened was the planners didn’t consider the possibility that peacetime could turn into war without advance notice. On December 7, 1941 Japan was fighting a war and the United States was still at peace; this created the imbalance between their armed forces that Japan exploited.
You’re misreading your cites, or failing to consider how close a lot of the other existing permanent defenses a/o Dec 1941 were to Fort DeRussy, which is the installation whose batteries you listed.
Fort Ruger (Diamond Head) was only a few miles to east with 1212" mortars, 28" guns plus smaller weapons, and moreover the large complex of batteries in Forts Kamehameha, Weaver and Barrett a few miles to the west with 416" (the more powerful pair of which could reach beyond the shore at any point around Oahu) besides another 812" mortars, 212" guns in long range barbette mounts and 212" DC.
It’s from the listing in “American Seacoast Defenses-A Reference Guide” by members of same org, Coast Defense Study Group which wrote the web pages you’re referring to but again you’re not considering it correctly. And the field artillery as well as mobile coastal guns like the 155mm GPF’s (the later, related M1 155mm was the ‘Long Tom’)…were mobile, so range from a particular point was not the only relevant measure.
Just to clarify, the Japanese had 10 operational battleships in Dec 1941. Two were with the historic PH raiding force leaving 8 others, unless the raiding force gave up its BB cover, then 10.
But Dissonance’s point about the relative ability of ships and forts is a truism which cannot be ignored. In the Napoleonic era the rule of thumb was that ships had to outgun forts by at least 3:1 to hope to suppress them, but the evidence of WWII is that ratio had gone up a lot, even against obsolescent late 19th century/early 20th century works (which a lot of the US ones were, the 16" installations were newer, one built in the 20’s the other in the 30’s). He pointed out one instance of overwhelming sea borne fire power failing to suppress a well protected coast defense installation, there are many others, including USN battlehips’ inability to seriously damage much less lightly gunned French coast artillery defenses in Morocco in Nov 1942. They were firing Armor Piercing shells, with relatively small bursters and delay fuses which generally resulted in the shells burying themselves and blunting their own effect, unless they directly hit a buried magazine, which they failed to.
The Japanese ships also would have been firing mainly AP. They would have had to bring a lot along in case they met US BB’s. This was shown in the IJN’s own biggest battleship bombardment of the war against Henderson Field on Guadalcanal Oct 13/14 1942: around 10% of the shells were incendiary AA clusters (not available in Dec 41) which did a lot of the damage to US aircraft, and some were so called ‘Common’ with larger bursting charges, but 2/3’s were AP shells which did little damage.
The south coast defenses of Oahu were way beyond the ability of 8 or 10 battleships to destroy with one load of ammo a lot of it AP, or within the life of their barrel liners even if they could be resupplied (USN BB’s firing at ad hoc Japanese defenses at various islands in 1943-45 were firing so called High Capacity shells which had much bigger explosive charges for a given caliber, and which moreover wore the barrels down at a much lower rate, so a ship could fire off multiple magazines worth, assuming it could be resupplied at a forward base, without returning to a well equipped dockyard to have the barrel liners replaced).
So all in all attacking the south shore is super high risk, would have to rely on some coup de main of infantry landing quickly seizing them without first suppressing them. The preferred way to invade Oahu would have been a landing away from the south shore. The basic problem there was one of climate and geography. The north shore is fairly flat at the shore, and leads to a plain directly pointing down to the key parts of the island. The problem is that in ~December-March there are typically big breakers along that shore, big enough to risk disaster in a landing. The western and especially eastern shores are more sheltered at that time of year, but those coasts are also mostly covered by the volcanic ranges along either side of the island, playing to a defender in containing a landing even once one was made. However there would be much less heavy artillery opposition (not zero, there were relocatable 8" gun and 240mm howitzer units ) coming ashore anywhere but on the south coast of the island.
Oahu wasn’t impregnable, but not easy. Another possibility is crippling the US fleet and air installations (as happened), invading another island in the Hawaiian chain (all virtually undefended compared to Oahu) then fighting a longer campaign to isolate and weaken Oahu, also wait for better seasonal weather perhaps for a landing. But it gets back to the issue of strategic diversion from the basic goal of breaking the oil embargo, by directly seizing oil fields.
I’m surprised by the posters who are suggesting that it was possible to invade Hawaii in December of '41. Well, actually not surprised because nothing does surprise me anymore.
Some yes, some no and – borrowing your phrase – absurd. The Japanese were indeed quite conservative in their planning for the late 1941 and early '42 invasion of the ABD controlled territory.
The IJA planned to advance down the British Malayan peninsula, through Singapore and onward to Dutch East Indies. They would employee the same strategy utilized in MacArthur’s largely ignored New Guinea campaign of landing, building an airstrip and then moving on to the next landing in an area within air cover.
The IJA had the twin advantages of an unprepared enemy and the remarkable range of their aircraft which allowed them to take longer leaps. (The engineering tradeoffs of that range were yet to be exploited by the US but that’s another story.)
The IJN saw the necessity of protecting the shipping lanes from possible American interdiction so they created a plan to go through the Philippines, taking out the US/Filipino forces, and eliminating the surface naval, submarine and army air force bases.
Over the years, Little Nimo and I have repeatedly debated the question if the US would have gone to war in the absence of an attack on US forces either in Hawaii or PI and neither of us will budge.
I point to the map and the location of the latter directly on the shipping lanes. If you approach it from a game theory viewpoint, the potential downside to guessing wrong on intervention would be catastrophic to Japan. In 1940, the US had already embarked on the Two-Ocean Navy Act then largest increase in peace-time USN capacity; authorizing $8.5 billion to make a remarkable 70% increase in the size of the fleet.
Japan couldn’t have left themselves vulnerable to potential US threats to cut off this oil. It was US sanctions which got them into the mess in the first place. Within a few years the IJN would become outclassed and the US could again force them in a war, but with a much stronger and more prepared enemy.
As there was no overall command structure to referee the two services, in true Japan fashion the Imperial military solved this by adopting both plans.
Returning back to the alt-hist speculators, it was not only the Japanese caution – not unreasonable IMHO – but also the technical impossibilities which would have prevented them from taking Hawaii, with the addition of several other key factors that you ignored.
Perhaps for the first time ever, Little Nimo and I agree on an alternative historical question concerning the Pacific War. Returning to the map, 6,000 km is simply too far to launch a successful invasion. Full stop.
While amateurs debate strategies, professionals looks at logistics: the first reality which vacates most alternative debates.
As you note, Japan was critically short of troop and other transports. What’s more they were critically short of oilers. The Kido Butai took most of their fast oilers on the real PH attack, which only took along two BB instead of the eight proposed in this thread.
The simply was an insufficient number of oilers for an armada parked around Hawaii for the duration of an invasion.
Even if they had more oilers, they didn’t have oil. The week-long Midway disaster burned up an entire peacetime year’s worth of the critical fuel. An attempted invasion of Hawaii would have consumed at least that much, depleting much more than 50% of their reserves, with no reasonable expectation of bringing on captured fields quickly.
The IJN experience of refueling prior to the war was minimal. The weather in December also was problematic. In the historical attack, the Kido Butai was prepared to reduce their size if they were not able to refuel.
Anyone who suggests that an invasion would be possible simply hasn’t studied. How long would this fleet be parked off the Hawaii shore? How to protect it from aircraft and submarines as well as the remainder of the surface fleet? The attack on PH sunk a bunch of old BB, but there was the rest of the Pacific fleet ready to strike back.
Even – hypothetically – if the IJA took Oahu, they would not have been able to keep it supplied.
The IJN didn’t have the ships and planes to both carry out an attack on the Pacific Fleet, neutralize the USAAF on Hawaii and directly invade the DEI. They had six fleet carriers, all in the Kido Butai tasded with the attack on PH. An invasion would have required more than the four remaining light or escort carriers. Note that Japanese fleet carriers carried fewer planes than the American equivalents.
The Kido Butai carried 414 aircraft. The remaining four light or escort carriers would have added a mere 118 more.
Corry El, how would you split up these 118 aircraft to support your two invasions of the DEI and Hawai? Absurd.
The others reasons for the impossibility includes Japanese command structure, leadership inexperience and the lack of training.
The IJA and IJN were separate entities and only hostile to each other at times. The IJA would never have agreed to an invasion of Hawaii in the winter of '41. Period. Any changed into their nature would have made it more likely that they simply never invaded China to begin with, rather than simply agreeing to fool’s errand.
A lot of your argument seems to be based on misreading my posts. I did not say it was technically possible to invade Hawaii and the conduct the two (historical) major thrusts of the Japanese operations in 1941/42, through Malaya and PI to DEI, on the historical schedule. That seems actually crystal clear in the part you quoted, ‘couldn’t have done both’, and understanding that ‘seize the oil fields directly’ means the operations in actual history.
Strategically the direct goal was breaking the oil embargo. And as I said it’s some kind of indirect bank shot at best strategically to see how invading Hawaii would better achieve that. And according IJN doctrine and attitudes it’s very hard to see it being approved.
Although as I mentioned in a previous post, the eventual complete failure of actual Japanese plans makes it difficult to categorically reject alternatives if physically possible. How much worse could things have turned out than they eventually did? (conceivably they could have actually, but the actual plans led to a catastrophe eventually). Likewise ‘couldn’t be sustained logistically’ applies to the large sphere actually conquered, that wouldn’t categorically distinguish an even rasher plan.
But I do not agree an invasion of Hawaii was technically impossible operationally and tactically, nor do I accept I’ve given any ‘absurd’ argument in support of that position.
An invasion as I mentioned previously would have been staged from the Marshalls (~2300 miles from Majuro to PH) not directly from Japan. Still a long way, but obviously not impossible just from distance aside from any other consideration, since an invasion was launched in the other direction a couple of years later.
Correctly understanding the point as technical feasibility of a Hawaii invasion if it took priority over Malaya/PI operations including postponing them altogether, Japan was not critically short of troops or transport shipping.
Nor tankers. The actual Hawaii operation used 8 of the 20 Japanese tankers capable of at least 16 kts (see Parillo “The Japanese Merchant Marine in WWII”). These ships weren’t really fully fledged oilers in USN or IJN sense, there were IJN oilers but they were older and slower and not used in the operation. But to support a slower invasion force all tankers could be used, and the ones accompanying the actual raid comprised only 10-15% of tanker tonnage based on varying estimates (Parillo, USSBS). The Japanese merchant tanker fleet was largely idle in December 1941…because of the embargo.
Eventual shortage of oil, while conducting a military operation which didn’t directly obtain any, is again the big strategic flaw in the idea of invading Hawaii. However it’s not true the Japanese lacked the oil in December 1941 to mount such an operation to begin with. The quote from Wilmott (“Barrier and the Javelin”) about fuel consumption in the Midway operation v peacetime annual consumption rate might be true but isn’t directly relevant. Per Evans and Peattie (“Kaigun”) the IJN oil stockpile at the start of the war was 6.5mil tons. Consumption on all actual operations in 1942 (initial conquests, Midway, Guadalcanal campaign etc) was 4.8mil. There was no significant production from the captured fields till late '42. So the Japanese were hand to mouth from the new conquests by 1943 (whereas the original IJN estimate was that the stockpile alone would last for 2 yrs of wartime operations). But it’s not true that a lack of oil in Dec '41 made an invasion of Hawaii ‘technically impossible’ if it took priority.
Again this doesn’t necessarily apply considering the invasion force is approaching on a shorter route characterized by better weather, and the operation can include seizing undefended islands to obtain sheltered anchorages (eg. the US fleet anchorage at Lahaina Roads between Maui and Molokai, virtually no defenses).
The US air contingent in HI was largely suppressed in the actual operation pending reinforcement from the West Coast, though the risk of not accomplishing that would be among the factors making the risk of a Hawaii invasion unacceptable. Likewise the force of 4 obsolescent and 6 modern operational US subs at PH (11 other subs assigned to the two squadrons there were on the West Coast in overhaul or work up, see Blair “Silent Victory”) represented a serious risk. However 6 obsolescent and 23 modern US subs based at Manila Bay didn’t manage to have much impact on Japanese operations in the PI in the actual case.
The immediate remaining striking power of the US Pacific Fleet was centered around 3 a/c carriers: Enterprise, Lexington and Saratoga. Wasp, Yorktown and Ranger were in the Atlantic (back to the shift in relative USN emphasis somewhat away from Japan after the start of WWII). Hornet, in the Atlantic, was commissioned but not yet operational. So again these ships represented a risk to the six ship Japanese fast carrier force, which would also expend a good deal of its munitions in the raid phase, but hardly strong enough to make it technically impossible for that force, plus Ryujo and Zuiho (plus the negligible combat capability of Hosho; Shoho was commissioned but not yet operational) supporting the invasion force, to continue to operate near Hawaii.
Again, the Japanese eventually failed to keep everything they seized properly supplied.
This is irrelevant on two counts. First again I think it was clear I was not talking about a Hawaii invasion without sacrificing other operations, and secondly as was pointed out in the discussion of impact of land based Zeroes’ extraordinary range in the PI/DEI operations, the main Japanese carrier force was lightly used after PH up to the Indian Ocean raid in April '42. The reason the Japanese couldn’t invade Hawaii and do the other operations simultaneously was general shipping constraint, not carriers.
They cooperated well enough in the actual land/sea/air campaigns through mid 1942. So again that fails IMO as making it ‘impossible’. As to would the IJA have supported this idea, well neither did the IJN obviously, in actual fact.
But ‘experts talk logistics’ can become an empty mantra like anything else. As discussed just above, it was not actually logistically impossible for the Japanese to invade Hawaii. It would have been a huge diversion of resources. It wouldn’t have been sustainable in the long run if it didn’t somehow lead to knocking the US out of the war with some negotiated peace that solved the oil problem, or allowed a subsequent delayed campaign to get those oil fields. So very strategically speculative and Rube Goldberg. But logistically impossible to mount such an operation in the first place? No, from the evidence AFAIK.
However even if that continues to be debated, the degree of logistical difficulty is a function of how big an invading force is required, which is in turn a function of the US defenses. Which were simply not ‘pitiful’. Two infantry divisions (the US 24th and 25th Infantry Divisions on Oahu) is a sizable force compared to various island campaigns of the Pacific, requiring an at least comparably size force to be landed against them, or else isolating the island over a long period to weaken that force to where a much smaller one could overcome it. That’s a lot of the logistical equation. Nor were the coast defenses weak, as previously explained, not on the south coast, so a quick seizure that way would have been very risky even for the biggest force the Japanese could send, logistically.
It’s not two entirely separate constraints, logistics and the force required by the defense.
I’m always fascinated by the odd juxtaposition of access to military trivia with the absolutely bonkers’ proposals by alt-hist enthusiasts.
First, the Pacific Fleet and air installations were not “crippled” in the sense that they would be unable to atomize any invading force left after the the Kido Butai + invasion fleet left. The IJN armada would have to depart well before the landing force would have the chance to overrun Oahu, or to fully dig in on another island.
There were two treaty cruisers, five light cruisers and thirty-odd DD untouched or with light damage in the historical attack. there were the three carriers in the Pacific, with their cruisers and destroyers as well as those in the Atlantic.
There is no realistic scenario in which the Kido Butai Plus[sup]+[/sup] could hang around the waters long enough to allow the invaders to overrun Oahu and the other islands, which would be the only way to prevent them from getting kicked off themselves.
Of course, it is only in one’s imagination that the air installations were “crippled.” I’ll ask for a cite for you since it did not occur.
Knocking out air facilities was problematic. It’s fairly easy to crater a runway, which the enemy simply fills in the holes and they are back in business. Granted there were a large number of airplanes knocked out, but airplanes are replaceable.
Walk me through this logic because I can’t see it.
The IJA and IJN agree that they are going to take Hawaii. (They never would have in December, 1941 for strategic and logistic reasons but that’s for later.)
They agree they can’t handle Oahu even with the element of surprise, with an under prepared enemy asleep at the wheel. So they load up 50,000 troops, drop them off on another island and then wait for spring. At which point, they bring another 75,000 to 100,000 troops and waltz into Oahu without problems because (multiple choice):
A. The US military and government gives up and decides to play backgammon instead of fortifying their main Pacific base up the wazoo.
B. The US thinks that the IJA troops are tourists and they’ll go back home after they get bored.
C. There are absolutely no other coastal artillery in the world for the US Army to set up on Oahu while waiting for Round II.
D. The US decides to quit and sues for peace.
E. This is alt-history where we don’t allow facts to get in the way of a good theory.
I would love to be a fly on the wall when the staff officer tried to sell that one to Yamamoto.
SO: "We can’t invade Oahu now because the south shore is too heavily fortified and the ocean on the north shore is too rough. So, we’ll take over another island and wait until spring when the seas are calmer.
Y: “Wouldn’t the American devils fortify the north shore by then?”
SO: “No, they’re too stupid.”
Y: “______________” (Fill in the blanks.)
Oh, I understand. You are suggesting seizing only the oil fields, without all the hassles of invading PI or Malay and Singapore. Of course, this leaves all those pesky Allied bases weeks or months to prepare for the eventual attack by Japan and that element of sudden surprise is lost. Even Mac would have a chance to recover by then.
You misspelled impossible again.
Now we enter the rabbit holes of alt-hist and try to play whack-a-mole with completely implausible tales, which simply doesn’t interest me.
The Japanese get the benefit of knowing the future, hence the reason they would consider something so incredibly risky but the US doesn’t. Check.
Another couple of points then I’ll let you run free, unchecked with your imagination.
Damn. I missed that one. I completely overlooked the one where the US invaded Japan’s major Pacific base from 2300 miles away, was able to drop off soldiers and leave them on their own, while this force takes the bases on their own. My bad.
Unless the intent was to outdo DrDeth in false equivalencies.
And how many of them were active battles over an extended period of time? Besides Guadalcanal, of course, which the Japanese couldn’t even keep supplied even without a US base nearby, so they had to abandon the field.
Anyway, hand wave everything and nothing is impossible.
I’m citing a post where I’ve already covered this exact topic with cites. You’d know that if you read it.
Actually, your cites say the exact same thing, if you’d bothered to actually read your own cites.
1)It’s substantially more firepower than one battleship and 2) if you’d bothered to read where I ‘cited myself’ you’d realize why coastal defense artillery has a huge advantage over ship based guns, Again, it took the Allies nine days pounding at a single battery at Toulon with 3 battleships, several cruisers, and continual bombing and still failed to put it out of commission. Knocking out coastal defense batteries requires placing direct hits with large caliber weapons to stand any chance of putting them out of commission. Hitting the turrets of battleships isn’t necessary or even the easiest way to put them out of commission; flooding and fire are what sink ships, neither of which requires precise hits on the main batteries. If you’d read further you’d also see an excellent post by Grey Ghost on why fire control is actually easier for land based guns firing at moving ships than vice versa.
I can’t help but note the irony of the poster who insisted Japan could have invaded India and kept going to the middle east, never mind that when they tried at Imphal-Kohima they starved to death is now calling logistics a problem.
The defenses were far from pitiful, and attempting to denigrate the coastal artillery as “WWI period” is truly absurd. What era naval rifles do you imagine those 8 Japanese battleships were armed with? Here’s a clue: the Kongo class were commissioned between 1911-15, the Fuso class between 1912-17 the Ise class 1915-18 and the Nagato class between 1917-21.
You might want to take further notice that nobody tried to conduct an amphibious landing against anything like the kind of coastal defenses Oahu had during WWII, not the Allies and not the Japanese. You might want to consider why that was, and why Japan didn’t land directly on Singapore but instead made an uncontested landing 200 miles north and spent two months marching down the Malay peninsula. One final note is that during the first 100 heady days of victories when Japan launched the war, they made a grand total of two contested landing, and only three contested landings during the entire war. Of those two ended in complete disaster: the first landing on Wake Island and the landing at Milne Bay. The only “successful” contested landing they made was the second landing on Wake Island.
I can’t help but note the irony of the poster who insisted Japan could have invaded India and kept going to the middle east, never mind that when they tried at Imphal-Kohima they starved to death is now calling logistics a problem.
You might want to take further notice that nobody tried to conduct an amphibious landing against anything like the kind of coastal defenses Oahu had during WWII, not the Allies and not the Japanese. [/QUOTE]
Sure, if they hadnt had to worry about the US navy and could land or supply by sea. Remember, my hypothesis was the Japanese not declaring war on the USA, just the Dutch and British. So the entire IJN could support the drive into India. 12 battleships, 25 carriers plus hundreds of planes, 45 cruisers, etc.
The Atlantic Wall was pretty heavily defended.
I can’t address your general problem with ‘alt history’, but as far as my posts here the ‘military trivia’ you’re complaining about seem to be relevant gaps in your own knowledge, about the Japanese tanker fleet, size and consumption rate of the oil stockpile, size the US sub fleet at PH as compared to the negligible impact on Japanese operations of a larger US sub force in the PI, even perhaps existence of the Japanese bases in the Marshalls (why else assume any Japanese operation would have to follow the great ciricle route, in often bad weather, directly from Japan?). You haven’t contradicted anything I’ve actually said, just things you seem to believe I said but I did not.
I didn’t say the ‘air installations’. I said the US air contingent was largely suppressed pending reinforcement from the West Coast, which is true. Per the USAAF’s official history, 79 of 231 a/c in the Hawaiian AF remained operational after the raid, the only modern strike a/c of which were 14 B-17’s and 10 A-20’s (some of those B-17’s were damaged, see Salecker, “Fortress against the Sun” for details). As in the sub case, we can compare to the PI where half the 35 plane B-17 force in the Far East AF remained operational after the initial Japanese strikes on Clark Field, but had negligible impact on the later Japanese landings, even though those were not that well covered by fighters. There’s certainly room for doubt that the small remaining Army bomber force would ‘atomize’ Japanese shipping, given the low effectiveness of Army bombers v shipping through most of 1942.
Also note that there were Army satellite fields on both Maui and Molokai, islands which again were essentially undefended. So capturing those fields for land planes was in another move in the ‘risky to count on’, not ‘impossible’ category. In general setting up an austere a forward base (at least a protected anchorage) in the islands was not ‘impossible’: would probably would be a feature of any such plan. So it wouldn’t be automatic that US convoys could immediately reinforce Oahu from the West Coast (which is about as far as the Marshalls).
Unless the IJN force was defeated by the remaining US fleet. Based on the actual raid result that would be centered around 3 carriers to 6 larger IJN ones and 2 smaller ones plus the IJN battle line, and a cruiser/destroyer force at least correspondingly larger than USN if the IJN operation has priority. However the main IJN carrier force would have expended a good deal of its munitions, and in making a plan there was no gtee it would be as successful as it actually was against ships in the harbor and grounded a/c, although also risk to the US that one or more carriers happened to be caught in harbor. The remaining USN carrier/surface force is probably the biggest risk to such a plan, probably alone an unacceptable risk. However it doesn’t add up to impossible IMO.
You’ve twice misread what I think was a clear statement to begin which I then further clarified, to quote " ‘seize the oil fields directly’ means the operations in actual history." Means conquering Malaya and the PI to secure the sea lines of communications to the oil fields. IOW to repeat as many times as necessary, I did not say it was possible to invade Hawaii and seize the oil fields on the same schedule as happened.
Likewise I didn’t say the actual historical plan made as little strategic sense as invading Hawaii. But it’s not ‘going down a rabbit hole’ to point out the lack of strategic forethought in the actual plan as well. And it was only in August 1941 the Japanese cabinet finally rejected the IJA’s plan for a fall offensive from eastern Manchuria to seize the Soviet Maritime Province (see Coox, “Nomonhan”), which also made little strategic sense.
But would it have been operationally/tactically impossible for the Japanese to invade Hawaii? No, IMO, based on the facts I’ve given.
I’d quibble slightly to say if we’re going to include Milne Bay, where the Japanese landing itself was not contested, then we could include other variations like the opposed landings on Singapore proper and on Corregidor, even though those were short range ‘shore to shore’ operations of boats, not ships to boats, and supported by land artillery. Wake was really the only operation in the general kettle of fish as a notional Japanese landing on Oahu, and obviously much smaller.
I think your assessment of Oahu defenses is the more realistic, far from ‘pitiful’ at least if operating effectively (including 2 divisions of infantry, not only fixed defenses). But I’m again distinguishing between 1) what’s a plausible plan strategically 2) an acceptable risk operationally and 3) what’s possible.
A Hawaii invasion fails the first two tests, and something that fails them wouldn’t be done. However if anyway idly considering the third condition, a lot of the early operations in the Pacific War saw serious flaws in Allied material and training readiness, and Japanese operations succeeding that ‘should not’ have, or should have been much more closely contested, on paper. For example, as much deserved credit as the Marine defense of Wake receives, the second Wake invasion attempt, the only actual landing, saw a numerically inferior Japanese landing force succeed in forcing a surrender (the Singapore and Corregidor landing forces were also outnumbered by the defenders). And the coastal guns at Wake had not been entirely suppressed even the second time, but the Japanese landed at night. This is the kind of wildcard effect which I think makes it hard to say extremely bold Japanese operations would necessarily have failed.
That all of the islands are either in the hands of the enemy or neutralized. For example, the Philippines were successfully invaded. One of the small islands could be taken over (as actually happened) but unless the US is unable to discharge them then this is not a successful invasion.
Specifically, Oahu would have to fall.
Dropping off troops which get destroyed in not a successful invasion.
The odds.
I’m not going to argue against someone who would claim (which you haven’t yet) that “technically” means anything with a percentage above 0.00000000000%.
My definition of “impossible” is what the military leaders would use, which would be something more like 99.9% or 99.99%.
Goalposts.
Your claim is that it’s “operationally/tactically" possible to invade Hawaii. Anything less than the ability to kick the US off and maintain the sole military presence on the islands (until the US responds weeks or months later) is moving the goalposts.
If this is not your definition, then specifically state what you mean. Otherwise, it would be meaningless to engage with you.
It’s fair enough to ask now for an estimate of a probability of success, and a definition of success. But I hope at some point you could directly admit that you previously misunderstood or mischaracterized my argument, by answering a couple of times at some length as if I’d claimed the Japanese could have invaded Hawaii and conducted every other operation they actually did on the same schedule they did, which I never said. And the operational and tactical levels of warfare are standard terms, they don’t need scare quotes.
Likewise there’s miles of daylight between my position and that of ‘alt history’ people who’ve fallen in love with this idea to the point of a) ignoring whether it made strategic sense and b) ignoring the high risk level. But in considering their arguments and evidence over the years, I concluded that their proposed operation would not have been impossible nor very close to impossible.
On defining success, the problem with your Philippine analogy is the same one I’ve referred already for relative assessment of plans the Japanese did and didn’t attempt: the US did dislodge the Japanese from the Philippines. Your assumption is surely some kind of time limit to define the PI operation as an interim success, but while you say I haven’t defined ‘success’, in that respect neither have you.
And even on a shorter time frame, let’s imagine the US had somehow mounted a successful relief of the force bottled up in Bataan/Corregidor between January and Apr/May '42. Would that have made the invasion Luzon, driving the Philippine/US Army force back into a Bataan, a failure? Would it have made the whole idea of invading the PI ‘bonkers’ (in some sense the final complete failure of the war effort didn’t)?
The seizure of all the PI was militarily secondary. The initial success was suppressing US air power on Luzon, the inability of the large US sub force based there to have much impact (and it soon left), and the Japanese establishing themselves on Luzon. The ‘ultimate’ success in interim PI-local terms was forcing the surrender of Bataan and Corregidor. Occupation of the rest of the PI largely followed legally from coercing Wainwright to make his surrender on Corregidor effective throughout the islands.
Likewise an operation against Hawaii couldn’t IMO be called ‘bonkers’ if it succeeded in making a lodgement in the islands and interrupting resupply of Oahu, or directly seizing it, or one followed by the other, or one followed by eventual failure in the other in a campaign of weeks or months. To say it had to succeed a certain number of years (or forever?) is arbitrary compared to an actual war where the Japanese lost a reasonable proxy of a decisive fleet battle within 7 months. And in any case your previous argument seemed to say logistics capability didn’t exist to attempt such an operation at all; but that isn’t so removing the constraint (which I never imposed) of conducting all historical operations on the same schedule.
What probability of eventually seizing Oahu, at least for a time? I’d say less than 50-50 but way more than 1%. Again let’s consider PI for contrast. In retrospect, not of the particular course of events, but knowing the actual capabilities of the opposing forces at the time as demonstrated in the real events, the probability of that operation succeeding (in the interim) for the Japanese was very high, maybe not far from 99%. The actual ‘come as you are’ capabilities of the Japanese forces were underestimated relative to the Allies in the Pacific in Dec 1941, even by the Japanese. There’s a tendency to think in terms of Allied 1944-45 effectiveness IME (eg. US Army bombers ‘atomizing’ Japanese shipping, plenty of examples from 1943 on, very few bomb hits at all in 1941/42). However, would Japanese planners adopt a strategically Rube Goldberg plan with a 50% chance of relatively immediate failure and risk of the whole fleet, like an invasion of HI (the PI operation didn’t risk much of the fleet)? No, and I never said so.
I’ll address other points later but I would like a clear answer.
What specifically are you calling successful?
I will address the question of possible misunderstandings later but would like to know when you envision that it would be possible for the Japanese to undertake this endeavor.
Are you looking for all participants to directly admit” any mistake they make? Is this something which you are prepared to do yourself or is this simply something you wish to bludgeon others with?
The reason I ask is that you have made several clear mistakes. For example:
However:
As it seems you wish participants to “directly admit” error, certainly be my guest.
This is why I am insisting that you state upfront your arguments so that we don’t have to go through this for each and every point.
Again, let’s avoid denying what was said or seriously implied. For example:
Yet, when I stated that the IJA would never have considered this,
Your reply was not to clarify that you didn’t actually believe that the Japanese would adapt it. That would have made your position clear.
However, instead, you used said the following to “refute” my point.
No doubt this will be another case where I “misunderstand” your argument. Somehow I should have read between the lines that your real argument is the invasion was “technically” possible rather than “strategically” impossible, despite your comments.
Yes, you went on to say “As to would the IJA have supported this idea, well neither did the IJN obviously, in actual fact.” However, you will not see how these two sentences can leave the audience puzzled and attempting to guess what your meaning could be.
Why not simply have stated that this was hypothetical and leave it at that?
Quite frankly, trying to debate your arguments are like shooting a moving target. I really don’t have enough interest to go back and attempt to recreate what you did or didn’t say.
Finally, I really don’t want to get into challenges of my knowledge when I don’t agree with you. You stated:
My bolding.
This of course is as absurd as your argument on the technical aspects. Well educated people disagree with the interpretations of events all the fucking time.
As I typed this out, I changed my mind.
I really see no point in continuing a discussion with you. Which is too bad, because you seem like a person with a good grasp of the actual events, even though we disagree on hypotheticals.
So, don’t bother “directly admitting” anything and don’t worry about the questions I posed.
At the time of the Pearl Harbor attak, the Japanese had 9 carriers; consisting of the 6 full carriers that made up the Kido Butai, and two light and one escort carrier that supported the Philippine invasion.
The Japanese only had 25 carriers in service total over the course of the war.
So I guess if the Japanese could overcome the coastal batteries at Singapore that meant coastal batteries were useless. Nevermind that they landed 200 miles north and spent two months marching south for the express purpose of avoiding having to do something so stupid as to land against them.
Then your hypothesis morphed into:
Which when it was pointed out to you was horseshit **and your own cites **show it to be horseshit it morphed again into
Which hasn’t been what you’ve been saying all along at all.
So now your hypothesis is
Where Japan is going to pull all of these ships out of the ether on Dec 7th 1941 is pretty fantastic, but no more so that Oahu’s coastal artillery lasting ‘for seconds’ in the face of Japanese battleships, never mind how they were even going to get there to be able to defy the laws of physics with such shooting. Since we’re back to driving into India, and knowing your posting history just keep going straight through to the middle east, the true irony of your talking logistics becomes absolutely laughable. This is probably the fourth time I’ve told you the Indo-Burmese border is nearly roadless, dense jungle which is why the Japanese weren’t able to even advance up enough food to Imphal-Kohima to prevent mass starvation even after they had spent two years building the railway of death to try to push supplies from Thailand to Burma.
Now you’re just getting desperate and clutching for straws. Find me **a single **naval rifle or mortar of even 10 inches that the Allies faced at Normandy and I’ll eat my hat. For the record, which isn’t something you seem to care about with fantasy fleets of 25 carriers, the coastal defences at Normandy consisted of:
Maisy battery:actually three batteries totaling six 155-mm First World War French field howitzers, four 105-mm pieces, and four 150-mm pieces. This was the set of batteries assaulted by the 2nd and 5th Ranger battalions when the gun sites at Point Du Hoc proved to be empty.
Crisbecq Battery:Three 210mm Skoda guns. The battery “Prior to the Invasion of Normandy, the battery was subject to frequent aerial bombardments but it was still operational on D-Day, 6 June 1944. On this day, the battery was engaged in combat with the Allied naval and landing forces on Utah Beach. During the course of the battle, it sank the USS Corry and damaged several other ships. The battery came under attack from the American 4th Infantry Division on 7 June. Under the leadership of Walter Ohmsen, the crew of the battery defended itself until 11 June. On 12 June, soldiers of the 9th Infantry Division, started their attack but found only an empty evacuated battery.”
Merville Gun Battery:Four 100mm mountain howitzers. Taken by paratroopers under Lieutenant Colonol Terence Brandram Hastings Otway, DSO at heavy cost.
Notably only one of these batteries was actually composed of actual coastal artillery pieces, three guns of 8.1inch caliber as opposed to being nothing more than normal caliber field artillery impressed into the role of coastal artillery. Even more notably this battery remained in action from June 6th until evacuated June 11th and managed to sink a US destroyer. Bringing up this pathetic collection of field artillery that was faced with the largest amphibious assault in history and trying to compare it to the coastal artillery at Oahu in response to the point that nobody attempted or even thought about trying to land against anything near the kind of coastal artillery that Oahu had is truly, pathetically, desperate.
For 1, 2 and 3 I think was clear in every post I was saying a Japanese invasion of Hawaii was strategically highly questionable, even compared to the strategically questionable nature of the actual Japanese operations and other ones they actively considered*.
And how could it possibly be considered anything but hypothetical…when they didn’t do it. So I simply don’t understand your seeming point that it wasn’t clear I was speaking of technical capability. And I don’t know what ‘strategically impossible’ means. Just because something is strategically unwise, undesirable, irrelevant etc. doesn’t imply any judgement on technical military possibility. I think it’s clear I was discussing the latter, really puzzled how you’d conclude otherwise or even what exactly you’re concluding otherwise.
Here I made a mistake. I didn’t recall I’d said ‘installations’, I should have looked back and anyway been clearer to begin with I meant the aircraft and other equipment** not permanent destruction of the bases themselves. So again the point is that the Hawaiian AF was largely suppressed pending reinforcement from the West Coast, which is true. And, we can see by comparison that an Army bomber force of similar remaining size after the initial strikes in PI inflicted little damage on Japanese shipping within its easy reach in subsequent days: the Hawaiian AF’s remaining capability right after the PH attack was far from making it impossible for the Japanese to keep shipping in the area, trying to establish a forward base elsewhere in the island chain. Whic would render less than automatic rapid restoration of the HAF’s capability from the West Coast. But the US would try to reinforce, and might well still succeed, besides the bigger risk posed by the albeit outnumbered US carrier/surface fleet: high risk, not ‘bonkers impossibility’ in operational and tactical terms for the Japanese.
I’m simply noting cases where you claimed I’m making ‘absurd’ statements, then not refuting the further details I provide in saying my statements were not absurd, and it remains my opinion none have been, even close. On tankers, on oil, and I’m still just puzzled on your point of impossibility due to distance from Japan if you were thinking of the Japanese bases in the Marshalls.
*again, the actual Japanese strategy was an eventual complete catastrophic failure; and the Japanese actively considered, the IJA lobbied for, an invasion of the Soviet Maritime Province after the German invasion of the USSR, without any coordinated plan or agreement with Germany as far as is known. That IMO is about as much of a strategic head scratcher as invading Hawaii. So ‘compared to what?’ remains IMO a serious consideration in rating the strategic coherence of hypothetical Japanese plans.
** there was serious loss of replaceable items besides a/c, eg. from the USAAF official history:
“At Hickam Field some of the more important administrative and engineering files, the base parachute section, and the overhaul and assembly sections of the Engine Repair Branch had been wiped out. Test equipment, about 75 per cent of the equipment of the Aero Repair Branch, and more than half of the depot property stocks were destroyed.”
So I simply don’t understand your seeming point that it wasn’t clear I was speaking of technical capability. And I don’t know what ‘strategically impossible’ means. Just because something is strategically unwise, undesirable, irrelevant etc. doesn’t imply any judgement on technical military possibility. I think it’s clear I was discussing the latter, really puzzled how you’d conclude otherwise or even what exactly you’re concluding otherwise.