Bolding mine, this part is incorrect and addressed in the subsequent paragraph. That the Japanese were as successful as they were was something of a miracle with how pathetic their logistical capabilities were. Much of their early logistics consisted of what was known as the “Churchill ration”, i.e. captured supplies as they advanced. Logistics was not only severely limited for the Japanese it was looked upon with something akin to contempt, beneath the dignity of the warrior. Being assigned convoy escort duty was something to be avoided at all cost, and there wasn’t even enough of a merchant marine to support all of these offensive operations and keep the economy running properly at the same time to begin with. What happened when there was no longer a Churchill ration to make up for the gross deficiencies in Japanese logistics was far worse than just not being able to support offensive operations properly; it was starvation. After each failure to retake the airstrip at Guadalcanal, rather than doing something about the logistical situation that left the troops from prior attacks starving, they instead planned yet another offensive to retake the airstrip with no regard for how these troops were going to keep from starving to death after they failed to take the airfield in one fell swoop. The characters for the shorthand for the Japanese name for Guadalcanal, Ga-To, had a dark double meaning, the characters for Ga-To could also be read as ‘starvation island’.
In any event, I’m not sure where you’re getting your figures for the Battle of Wake Island. The Japanese were far from outnumbered by the Marines; the total Marine force on the island on Dec 7th was 449, 399 in the 1st Marine Defense Battalion and 50 from the detachment of VMF-211. Some had already been killed and wounded (23 were killed and 11 wounded from VMF-211 in the first air raid on Dec 8th) by the time of the second invasion attempt on Dec 23rd, which consisted of the 450 men of the Special Naval Landing Force that never made landfall in the first attempt, reinforced with at least 1,500 more troops from SNLFs, some sources put the total Japanese infantry landing force at 2,500. They certainly suffered horrific casualties, far more than the total number of Marine defenders; Japanese casualties from the second landing attempt totaled 820 killed and 333 wounded, this total doesn’t include the 325 additional sailors killed in the two destroyers sunk in the first attempted landing.
Yes, correct. However, I was talking about a invasion of India etc, later in the war, a *hypothetical war *where the Japanese never attacked the USA, just the Dutch and Brits.
IRL, their invasion failed due to logistics, as they could’nt support and feed their forces. However, with total naval and air superiority, that would not be a issue. Whether they would need 8 carriers or 25 is moot, since even 8 would give them total naval and air superiority in my hypothetical.
Can anyone argue that vs just the Dutch and RN the Japanese wouldnt have total naval and air superiority?
No, it meant Coastal batteries could be overcome by clever strategy.
My cites supported my claim. Your cite was *your own post. * “My cite is my post”.
Yes, indeed, the " Indo-Burmese border is nearly roadless, dense jungle". However, there’s this little body of water nearby called “The Indian ocean” which with * total naval and air superiority* you can bypass all that “roadless, dense jungle”.
Up until now, the two posters I’ve repeatedly disagreed with on WWII questions are you and Little Nimo. Never once in the twelve years of posting here have I felt the need to state my requirements for continuing a discussion. We disagree, but IIRC don’t make personal attacks, we pretty much stay on track and we don’t deny what we post.
My post was in response to the non-answer for my conditions of continuing a discussion which I stated in posts 51 and 56. Well, in the latter I simply gave up.
If people cannot agree on the grounds for the discussion then there simply isn’t anyway of moving forward.
You, Little Nimo, Sailboat, Dissonance, RickJay, **Mr. Kobayashi **I and others may agree or disagree with each other to various degrees, and I have no problem continuing. I enjoy it in fact. But when a straightforward answer is requested and not provided, then I lose interest. I’m also not going to get into mud slinging. Attack the post, not the poster and all that.
On the other hand, I have the objections to Corry, some of which I’ve laid out in the last couple of posts.
I have no belief that I were to continue a discussion that the goal posts wouldn’t be moved, that I wouldn’t be attacked for not understanding his(?) mixed messages and he wouldn’t continue to deny or attempt to obfuscate what he had stated.
So, I wrote that message to let him know that I had seen his post but would not respond.
Like anyone else you, of course, are never required to read anyone’s post, long or short.
Should have been faith. It’s funny, even though English is my native language, primarily speaking Japanese for 25+ years causes some mistakes to creep in.
Any further discussion of this would be better in the Pit, so I’m finished.
Now this is just idiotic. Japan had to attack the Dutch East Indies in December 1941 because the oil embargo was about to bring their entire economy to a grinding halt. Now not only do you make the absurd leap that the US would twiddle its thumbs while the Japanese took over the DEI and British Far East possessions, never mind that they would by doing so attack the US Asiatic Fleet which had dispersed to Borneo with elements on the way to Singapore when war broke out, now you’d have Japan miracle enough oil into existence for them to delay starting the war until September 1945 so that they could have their entire wartime production of warships available. This kind of begs the question of why they would need to take the oil from the DEI if they are somehow able to miracle enough oil into existence to continue the war in China for four more years and supply 25 carriers with enough oil. But now that you’ve been called on the absurdity of your figures, the number of carriers is now moot.
Oh, by ‘clever strategy’ you mean landing 200 miles away from them to avoid having to face them. Your only problem here is the 200 miles north of Oahu has an absence of dry land upon which to carry out this clever strategy.
Again, no, your cites don’t support your own claim in the slightest and in fact **say the exact same thing **as my cites do in the post that you clearly have still not read. This isn’t really a difficult concept to grasp, I linked to a post written on this exact same topic that is fully cited and advised you to read the rest of the thread. That you are still either unable or unwilling to do so or grasp this simple concept doesn’t mean “my cite is my post.”
Oh really? And just where is the merchant fleet needed to supply bypassing the border to invade the second most populated country in the world going to be miracled into existence from? You seem to have forgotten that Japan was desperately short of merchant shipping.
Wait, what? Now Japan having 25 aircraft carriers isn’t a moot point, and were going to let Japan wait until September 1945 to put all of them into service at the same time without having their entire economy having collapsed due to lack of oil four years earlier so they can seize the oil now - why again exactly?
I’ll just add the little point that waiting until 1945 means Germany and Italy have already been defeated freeing the entire Royal Navy to face the Japanese - which by the way at the end of WWII had 16 battleships, 50 carriers, 62 cruisers, nearly 200 destroyers, and 131 submarines. This is all of course assuming that the US, still too scared to get into the war, hasn’t lend-leased the UK some of those 24 Essex-class fleet carriers it has lying around that were authorized by the Two Ocean Navy Act long prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Some of those “carriers” (roughly half, by my estimation) weren’t going to be built until 1944+. If you are going to go with “what if’s”, wouldn’t you think that Japan’s greatest chances of conquest to exist up to early 1943, but no further?
Sure. But they didnt need 25. Even just the 8 used at Pearl would have given them total Air and Naval superiority over the combined RN and Dutch forces.
Come to think of it, but wasn’t Singapore largely due to Arthur Percival and his general staff? I’m not saying that everything Gen. Percival did was wrong, but he does not seem to have displayed good preparation or leadership, despite having ample supplies, time, troops, and warning. Sure, you can assume that the American commander in a hypothetical defense of Hawaii is similarly poorly prepared, but it’s still not altogether likely. It seems very unlikely that, especially given months to resupply and reinforce the main island, that even 25 Japanese carriers and a large invasion force could drive it off - which means that the Japanese would have a serious problem threatening the mainland United States (with a view to enforcing a peace on their terms).
While I can’t say that such incredible runs of luck never have or could ever have favored one side, DrDeth’s scenario sounds like the Japanese playing the lottery and winning a huge jackpot three or four times a year for about five years straight.
This is what has to happen for most of the alt-hist scenarios to work. Basically, the Axis gets all the good breaks and the Allies have to do worse than what would be reasonably expected. They also are Monday morning quarterbacking, where the specific developments are to counter what happened in real life.
As you say, then there is a chance that the commanders of the forces in Hawaii could be as incompetent as Gen. Percival, but there are material differences between that situation and Singapore.
Everyone in the early days misjudged the Japanese in the early months of the war. To assume that would continue indefinitely flies in the face of the historical record.
Likewise, any proposals that Hawaii would fall fails to consider that it would not be sacrificed by the home country such as happened to the US forces in the Philippines.
On an earlier point raised in this tread, the ineffectiveness of US subs in the Philippines was raised as an example of what could go wrong in Hawaii, which is a ridiculous comparison. The subs were pulled from the PI before the invasion so of course they would not be effective.
Nor would the general staffs allow Hawaii to be as mismanaged as Singapore。This was not some colonial outpost which was expected to last on its own while the home country had a more important war going on. All eyes would be on the preparation.
The preparations and commands would not be up to a single man or two single men. The full force of the US Army and Navy would be available and if it really seemed like there was going to be an invasion, we would have seen even more resources thrown there.
Numbers get thrown around willy-nilly. There were 25 carriers! No, eight! No! It doesn’t matter!
However, for Hawaii, by April of 1942, right after the DEI fell, the garrison on Oahu had grown to 62,700 Army troops (two full infantry divisions, plus support troops) in Hawaii, and another 8,900 air personnel. This does not count the thousands of Navy personal who would be used in a pinch.
Here is a page on combinedfleet.com which shows how two cases for a possible Japanese invasion of Hawaii would fail. The first is after Midway, assuming a Japanese victory and the other a sudden invasion on December 7, 1941. Both fail. Naturally, logistics play a huge role.
Not surprisingly, since they quote a source showing that the Japanese admitted they wouldn’t have been able to resupply Midway even if they had taken it, let alone something larger and further away such as the Hawaiian islands.
The site does show that logistics would have been impossible to have sent an invasion fleet in early December.
Another point is that the Japanese simply lacked the required experience and knowledge:
It’s only in impossible alt-hist fan fiction that a country without experience, without knowledge, without an amphibious doctrine would attempt such a feat and pretend that it would be plausible.
The site doesn’t even address some of the other aspects such as the coastal batteries.
It does point out that the Kido Butai simply lacked the power to control the air over Oahu
When discussing the difficulties which a Japanese army would face:
And goes on to demonstrate the material differences between the forces in Singapore or the Philippines and Hawaii, where all of the Army would be regulars and not a mixed force including undertrained natives.
Other points include:
They do mention a point which has been brought up here, that a large convey traveling at transport speed would make it much more susceptible to being spotted.
It is utterly absurd to assume that the Japanese could waltz in Hawaii anytime after December 7th and still achieve surprise. The planes would not be wingtip to wingtip. The battleships would not be tied to battleship row with bands playing The Stars and Stripes. The radar would be working, surveillance planes would be up. This isn’t an idle conjecture. It’s the historic truth.
Yeah, not as succinct as all your posts. That’s really pretty amazing actually. I think translates, succinctly, to you said stuff was ‘absurd’ but could never demonstrate any particular thing I said which was, give or take quibbling about wording.
On combined fleet site people, they are knowledge, and indeed it was very possible a Japanese invasion of Hawaii in Dec '41 would fail as I’ve said from the get go (one month’s later too, which is different anyway). But that’s not the same as impossible, or 1% likely or similar asymptote to impossible.
IMO the definitive published account of the Wake campaign to date in English is “A Magnificent Fight” by Robert J. Cressman which sticks to the Japanese records for their side of the story and weeds out US at-the-time estimates of enemy forces/losses given as if facts: those remained in some other English accounts even postwar, like the USMC official history which seems to be source for Japanese casualties on the wiki page.
The night landing Dec 23 was composed of 210 men of the Takano Company aboard the destroyer Oite who disembarked to two landing craft, 160 men of the Uchida company who stayed ex-DD Patrol Boat 32 as it grounded deliberately, 70 more of that unit who tranferred to a landing craft, 140 men of various units under the Itaya Co. on PB 33 as it grounded, and again another 70 who disembarked in a landing craft, so ~650 total (pp.192-197). Another approximately 250 reinforced after day light. They suffered a total of 110 KIA/97 WIA.
The Marine defense battalion was somewhat outnumbered by them, but the total of US military personnel was over 500 and total with civilians, volunteers from whom participated in the fighting, was over 1500. Landing on a Japanese held island one would have expected to have to kill perhaps 90% of construction workers (often from Korea or Taiwan), rather than maybe 99% of the military personnel (before Okinawa, at least). This was just a difference in attacking western v Japanese held islands where there was no escape for the defenders.
Also note first hand accounts of the Wake landing say that at least some of the units were not allowed to carry rifle ammo to try to gain surprise overcoming Marine positions at night, their commanders’ tactical choice but the machine gun-heavy Marine defense was hardly outgunned. The landing force had none beyond infantry weapons, nor fire support in the night phase, though general harassing air attacks from Soryu and Hiryu a/c and from floatplanes resumed at daylight.
That’s really pretty amazing actually. I think translates, succinctly, to you said stuff was ‘absurd’ but could never demonstrate any particular thing I said which was, give or take quibbling about wording.