Yes. Hilarity ensued.
Well, not for the Japanese. You can read up on it from Wikipedia if you like. It was an unpleasant campaign for all involved, and the Japanese were gruesomely crushed. Frankly, they really didn’t have nearly enough resources to launch the invasion, and IIRC were unprepared the weather as much as they were unprepared for American soldiers.
In any event the Japanese would have both wanted and needed to take the Hawaiian islands first, and after Midway there was never again any serious chance of their doing so.
One more reason the UK did not invade Germany by sea in WW 1.: air power and air superiority existed in WW 2, enabling, say, D-Day at Normandy to be possible (not to mention many other amphibious invasions in the same war.) There was no such situation in WW1 - air power was virtually nonexistent in the first years of the war. Ergo, without air power in the equation, it would have come down to the British fleet versus the German fleet for control of the landing areas. If the British fleet was defeated or even badly mauled, they would open up the UK to invasion. It risked too much.
Another factor - the UK’s armies were already heavily committed in France, so unlike WW 2, there was no compelling strategic reason to “invade the continent” - they were already there.
Finally - There were not that many enlightened thinkers in the armies of the day. Generals were generals and admirals were admirals. Joint operations as we know them today were virtually unknown and unthinkable then. When politicians like Churchill did impose the very novel idea on the military, the eventual result was the well known disaster in the Eastern Mediterranean.
I have often wondered why the British didn’t invade Belgium by sea, to get around the trenches. The idea being that the French, and what forces the Brits could spare, launch attacks all along the front line to draw down German reinforcements, then the British land (probably Commonwealth troops) between the front line trenches and the Belgium/Netherlands border, as a kind of end run. This would be instead of the Gallipoli landings.
But perhaps the answer is that there was no established doctrine for opposed amphibious landings; they’d have to make it up as they went along and any mistakes (say inadequate supplies or reinforcements) would probably be fatal.
In theory, amphibious operations were a long-standing part of military doctrine. In practice, the officers and men were complete amateurs at them, so this might be true. But more importantly, it was much to late for that.
By the time this was an opportunity, the trench situation had taken on a life of its own. It was no longer even about winning the war anymore - military leaders had no idea how to do that, which is one reason the situation degraded so far. Even the much-vaunted Hindernburg and Ludendorf lost control in the face of grinding trench warfare. Nobody would give up, but nobody had any better ideas about what to do.
In any case, landings on the scale required were impractical. Remember that motor cars were in the their infancy, and rarely of any use in filthy, rough-hewn warzones. Even early tanks had only limited effect. Add in the shortages of everything industrial, and the need to build landing craft for extremely risky one-use operations which would be hard-pressed to advance even if they succeeded in landing and taking positions, and it begins to look like a massive boondoggle with few advantages.
Command and Control was the real problem. The time lag between rapidly changing events and HQ finding out what was going on and issuing fresh instructions was too great, and it didn’t close until portable R/T sets began to become available in the late '30s (and they weren’t all that portable or reliable). They tried all sorts of ways of closing the gap, burying telephone lines, pigeons, rocket signals, and some of them might work in some situations, but not reliably enough.
The first British strategies thought up after it was clear Germany would be the most immediate future threat to the Empire involved amphibious landings on the Frisian coast, but these were abandoned because:
A) Mines, torpedo craft, and coastal batteries made landings far too risky in view of the marginal gain even successful landings would achieve. In a purely Anglo-German war the British didn’t have enough men to make landings in Germany a practical proposition, and in a war alongside France it was thought even a large-scale landing wouldn’t draw off enough German troops from the Western Front to be worthwhile.
B) The Army refused to cooperate in such schemes, preferring a “continental commitment” (i.e. deploying the British Army to fight alongside the French Army). The advocates of amphibious operations were by and large naval officers, and in the years before the First World War the two services were at each others’ throats because of the extremely tight budgets allocated to them by the Liberal government, which wanted to avoid defense expenditure so they could institute old age pensions and other social reforms.
The Navy for its part didn’t view the German fleet as an obstruction to landing operations. In fact they thought such operations would be an excellent method of bringing about a fleet to fleet engagement.
The notion that the British could “get around” the trenches is misguided. Attacks breached defensive works all the time. The trouble was, what next? Your men pour past the trenches. In theory, now they rampage through the enemy’s rear.
Except they can’t do that. They are all on foot, no tanks or trucks or even horses. They have no radios and so are out of communication and can’t coordinate. They have minimal artillery, because they’d have to drag it with them. They have only the ammunition and food they’ve carried on their backs during the attack.
Meanwhile, the defenders have intact communications. They can telegraph back to headquarters that they’re under attack, and new troops can be moved up via railroad and existing transportation. They engage the attackers, and machine guns and artillery force the attackers to dig in.
At best, all you’ve accomplished with your attack is to create a new salient in the line. At worst, your attackers are wiped out.
And your amphibious assault has the exact same problems, except 10 times worse. Your attackers establish a beachhead, and pretty quickly are on the defensive. Except there are no rear areas to resupply or reinforce them, except by sea.
The problem of trench warfare in WWI wasn’t that trenches were impregnable fortifications. Breakthroughs happened all the time, it’s just that neither side could exploit those breakthroughs.
Indeed, WW1 happened to take place at a point in history where technology heavily favored the defender rather than the attacker: established railways could move large amounts of men and material up to the front, but not beyond it. Telegraph and telephone lines gave the defender rapid and coordinated communication, not the attacker. It took motorized transport and radio respectively to even the odds.
First Lord of the Admiralty, a position he was effectively removed from until WWII after the disastrous Gallipoli landings discussed above. John Fisher was First Sea Lord.
Churchill’s main contribution during WWI was commanding an infantry battalion in the field, all while remaining a Member of Parliament.
What’s the difference?
And while remaining sober?
Or they could’ve gone with death rays . . . never understood why they didn’t . . . I guess it was just a little before their time . . .
First Lord of the Admiralty was* a civilian cabinet position. First Sea Lord is a professional soldiering (well, sailoring) position. I suppose that’s somewhat counterintuitive, since the former has “admiralty” in it. Think of the US Secretary of the Navy and Chief of Naval Operations (the Joint Chief of Staff who represents the Navy): the former is a civilian, the latter is a career military officer.
*there isn’t one now. The position was eliminated when the services were folded into the Ministry of Defence.