Perry, Sperry, Black Fleet, White Fleet, let’s call the whole thing off.
No, you would not be responsible for provoking further bad actions if you embargo. Perhaps the Japanese would have called off their imperialism.
I think the theory is that the IJN would bomb and shell the holy hell out of Midway and the defenders which is why I said if the fleet was made to just invade Midway (and implicit in that is more troop transports and landing craft) then they could have been successful.
The plan was make, the coup attempt was lead, the action was do, the emperor’s order was give, the coup was defeat, and the history was write.
Meri Kurisumasu, Misutā Rorensu.
As I wrote earlier, if you read the posts I listed above and the discussion earlier in the thread (before too many of the hijacks ensued) the Japanese would not have been able to have actually invaded even if they had sunk the US carriers.
Several of the posts were really well written, @txtumbleweed’s post, 15 (I may have said 14) is spot on, although as I noted, they only had 2,500 assault troops (and limited numbers of landing craft) up against 3,000 to 4,000 US personnel, the majority were marines.
In an alt-hist scenario where the Japanese sink the three American carriers, don’t lose any flattops themselves, destroy all of the land-based aircraft on Midway, bring up their ships and pound away on the atoll they they still wouldn’t have been able to take the island. This is discussed in Shattered Sword as mentioned previously.
A quote from there:
One major problem with alt-hist scenarios, (which I’ve been guilty of in the past as well) is to discount the importance of knowledge and experience which comes from fighting a lot of battles. Looking back long after so many successful US landings, it’s hard to imagine the actual difficulties involved. The Japanese didn’t have any joint Army and Navy training exercises for the landing, they didn’t have a set system for directing naval fire from personnel on shore, had they landed, etc., etc.
The Japanese never did very well against opposed landings, preferring to make landings on unopposed beaches, often at night. Without tracked landing craft, no tanks or other armored vehicles, and only lightly armed infantry with a few medium machineguns and light mortars, going up against a much larger well-dug in defenders with tanks, it’s doubtful that many Japanese could have made it ashore and the ones would have a harder time getting past the mined beaches in the face of machineguns and endless barbed wire.
This is a video of the Japanese Daihatsu , and without tracks would have been forced to land on the far side of the reef. The defending Marine commander, Col. Shannon’s motto was “Wreck 'em on the reef” and there is not doubt that the lightly armed infantry would have been slaughtered.
Next:
I’ll quote myself because I’m genuinely confused:
Why is this still a question? With this post:
are you saying that someone here, in this thread, is defending the Japanese? If so, can you cite that post?
Again, who are these people? No one is making that argument here in this thread, so I don’t see the relevance of this. I’m sure if we search 4ch long enough, we can find people who blame the Clintons for WWII, but I’m not going to send time debating that. Unless someone here is making that argument, it has nothing to do with us.
Which is NOT my point. My point was should the IJN fleet had been put together with the express mission of invasion and NOT been concerned with destroying the American carriers then their invasion might have been successful.
I agreed that by having the fleet made for dual-purposes they doomed their invasion plans.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I had been responding to Whack-a-Mole who claimed “I’ve always been told it takes two to tango”. Japan attacked the US, without aggression by the U.S., and because we refused to help support their aggressions any longer. The war went on longer than just Pearl Harbor because we chose to resist their unprovoked attack, but they deliberately, knowingly, and intentionally started a war. In this case there was no moral failing on the part of the United States except possibly to have been too patient.
However, the point you’ve been attempting regarding diplomacy is also incorrect, and in any case excuses nothing, not even purely intellectual errors. The fact that Japan was unwilling to accept anything whatsoever short of complete military domination of eastern Asia does not mean the United States somehow made a “mistake” or asked “too much”. A peaceful diplomatic request is not justification for war. American diplomacy was not too harsh, it was if anything entirely too lenient. Roosevelt fell into the same trap that Czar Nicolas II did - thinking that because he (wisely) rejected war so the Japanese would also. A more prepared response quite possibly would have deterred the Japanese by making the initial attack futile or even self-destructive.
More to the point, the entire insistence that American diplomacy erred in its demands assumes that Japan had no moral duty to stop its violence. They did, and we asked for no more than that; not the dissolution of its Empire or their humiliation. We asked for what was obviously in their own best interest and even that was somehow “too far”. We asked for what many civilian leaders wanted at that very moment, but the cabal of leaders refused any concessions whatsoever until they were completely destroyed. Diplomacy - even Reason itself - is irrelevant in the face of such mad ambition.
I don’t see how that follows. What about bringing along 4 fleet carriers (to spring a trap for the USN with its response) precluded them also from having a more effective landing force? It’s not as if the Japanese built a task force from scratch for the sole purpose of Midway (dual purpose or otherwise). Rather, it’s yet another historical example of fighting a war with the fleet you have, not necessarily the fleet you need.
The IJN never really had an effective landing force, they never developed specialized craft for opposed sea landings. Perhaps late in the war they had designed some but certainly not by 1942.
In fact, until the Americans got busy with it, no nation had a effective force vs a opposed landing. The Nazis, with river barges and such would have been slaughtered if they had really tried Sea lion.
The IJA and IJN were masters of landing forces on a un-opposed area, then moving thru “impassible” jungle to hit from behind. Not possible at Midway. Worked well in other places.
They didnt even have plans for the Battleships to bombard, just some cruisers.
And even if they weren’t slaughtered on the beaches, they didn’t have the capability to bring up heavy equipment (like artillery and tanks) or to bring ashore significant quantities of ammunition and especially fuel. They’d be a bunch of light infantry raiding the locals for food and unable to launch any kind of offensive operations. The ability of the US to resupply troops without capturing a working port was huge, and seems to get taken for granted when people contemplate Japanese or German invasions.
There’s a New York Times bestselling book on the subject, there was a US federal lawsuit that wasn’t dismissed out of hand, and the argument has been discussed in the New York Times, The Atlantic, and The Guardian. I’m not referencing some weird 4chan conspiracy theory, I’m talking about a position that has managed to fuel a bestselling book, a major lawsuit, and multiple mentions in the press. I’m pointing this out to make it clear that this was a simple reference to a common, widely held viewpoint that has fueled a bestselling book, a major lawsuit, and multiple discussions in major news sources in multiple countries. If your question was genuine it’s now answered rather conclusively, but (like I said before) it appears that you don’t want to engage substantively with what I said and I’m not really interested in continuing the derail. (links to all of these in spoilers so it doesn’t flood the page with picture links).
https://www.amazon.com/IBM-Holocaust-Strategic-Alliance-Corporation/dp/0914153277
https://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/11/world/lawsuit-says-ibm-aided-the-nazis-in-technology.html?mcubz=0
https://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/07/books/books-of-the-times-ibm-s-sales-to-the-nazis-assessing-the-culpability.html
Hitler's Willing Business Partners - The Atlantic
IBM 'dealt directly with Holocaust organisers' | World news | The Guardian
OK, if their invasion plans were doomed, what specific things should they have changed? There have been a number of posts showing the specific problems so I won’t retype them all, but what specific things are you proposing?
ISTM that the Japanese really wouldn’t able to make a successful landing on Midway for all the reasons discussed in the above posts, especially the earlier ones I referred to.
The invasion part was put together with an actual invasion in mind, their plans were just piss poor.
The Japanese apparently believed that the atoll was still grossly underdefended which may be the reason they planned their attack with turned out to be with such inferior numbers. The rule of thumb is that the attackers require a 3:1 advantage over the defenders, although in the case like Midway, even a greater number may have been required.
As @DrDeth points out, the ability to make opposed landings was an American thing done later in the war, and it required far more factors than simple numbers and the specialized craft. For example, coordinated naval fire with the ability for forward spotters to direct the big guns was essential. The Native American “Code Talkers” are well known, but even simply having forward spotters on radios was required. The IJN lacked either a tested naval gunfire support doctrine or an established ground attack doctrine for its aircraft, as their navy was all about sinking other ships and not supporting the landing of army troops.
This is a common mistake in alt-hist, ignoring the timeline of when the various war methodologies and doctrines evolved.
Apparently, their plans did allow for the battleships to contribute if the island defenses were not neutralized first by air and then from the cruisers.
Well, in one wargame I won as the IJN by sending the BBs out as a diversion, to start bombarding the island, when the American carriers hit them, I hit back. I used the heavy cruiser squadron to escort the carriers also. The BBs did get chewed up really bad, true. I also tripled the number of scout planes. I used the new model Divebombers as scouts.
Now, the IJN did resort to such tactics later in the war, but IMHO it would have been unthinkable to send in those BBs (Ok, you can keep the Yamato back to escort the carriers, it is faster than the others) as a throwaway.
But it worked.
Still, the invasion of the island would have failed, altho Midway would have been pounded so hard it would have been useless as a airbase for quite some time.
There isn’t really a lot of basis for this ratio in modern warfare.
Anyway, does it matter? If the Japanese had brought 30,000 troops and way better amphibious landing capabilities and taken Midway, well, okay, but that wasn’t what they needed to do. Accomplishing the wrong mission (one that would have led to way bigger problems) isn’t a win.
Would the Japanese even have been able to resupply their troops ashore with fresh water? At most I suppose a soldier carries a 1 day water ration. Fighting in the hot sun would make them thirsty very fast. Give them 2-3 days without resupply and they would have died anyways.
Sure, they could float in water on rafts, they did that during Guadalcanal, with food and ammo.
Once there build a desalination plant, if they won.
Note the the IJN and IJA turned down the idea of taking Hawaii as they determined they couldnt feed the people and their army.
That’s the point. Also, for some reason had the Japanese been able to take it over, the US could either ignore and go around it, like they did with Wake in the first part of the war, or use it for target practice for the new air groups like they did with Wake in the latter part of the war.
It wouldn’t have helped Japan either way, because they wouldn’t have been able to keep it supplied, and it would have been just another atoll with starving Japanese soldiers at the end of the war.
Wise plan, build your own desalination plant. I heard a rumor from somewhere that the US one on Midway wasn’t particularly reliable, but that could have been fake news.
Shattered Sword states that Yamamoto was still pushing the invasion of Hawaii during the planning of the Midway campaign. Both the general staffs had previously been dead set against it, but after the Doolittle raid, they were in the process of changing their minds, even going so far as to set orders for troops to prepare for it (which seem to not be the same as actually having made the decision for proceed).
The logistics would not work, and the general staffs of both the services had previously been strongly opposed to the plans before, but they were changing their minds.
They really didn’t have a clue about how to win the war.
Or Truk, which is if anything closer to the war than Wake or Midway. Rather than invading it, the Allies just went past it, and then later bombed it to smithereens; like Wake, the Americans never bothered retaking it until they could do so peacefully after the surrender. The Japanese invested a lot of effort in fortifying Truk and it ended up being a waste.
Or Rabaul, which the Americans also managed to bypass.
However, the analogy I was trying for with Wake – unlike Truk or Rabaul – was fairly well isolated from the other actions and much more easily ignored. For both Truk and Rabaul, the bases were much larger and well defended, so it took more to wear down the defense where Wake was first cut off by submarines and then only later subject to a larger scale, two-day air campaign.
Had Midway fallen, the same thing would have happened. Isolate it by submarine, then hit it with a few carrier strikes then let it die on the vine.
The reverse would be Peleliu, which the Americans invaded in September 1944 despite its debatable importance. The result was a bloody mess; they took it but at a cost that even at the time caused public outcry and controversy back home. The bypass approach was clearly superior and it’s a shame it wasn’t used there.
From TokyoBayer
That’s the point. Also, for some reason had the Japanese been able to take it over, the US could either ignore and go around it, like they did with Wake in the first part of the war, or use it for target practice for the new air groups like they did with Wake in the latter part of the war.It wouldn’t have helped Japan either way, because they wouldn’t have been able to keep it supplied, and it would have been just another atoll with starving Japanese soldiers at the end of the war.
However, there were good reasons to close any airbases that Japan could strike from during the island-hopping campaign. An IJN runway there would have made a large portion of the central Pacific dangerous waters, since an American ship passing there might be scouted at an y point. And it would have been much easier to supply a small base like that. Bypassing that was possible but, checking a globe, would have made attacks against Japan longer and more difficult. Plus Midway helped protect the flank of Hawaii from further raids.
An invasion of Hawaii actually had even bigger issues than just logistics. Even if the logistics had just magically vanished, transporting enough troops would likely have been impossible with the actual shipping available to Japan. Even a wild flailing attempt would have required risking the entire Japanese fleet, and that likely would have been detected far earlier and more easily than Yamamoto’s raiding party, which, though a significant detachment, did not prevent the IJN from striking targets all over the western Pacific at the time.
Of course, you are correct in that logistics were a huge weakness for Japan at the time and led to some bizarre episodes, such as the invasion of the Aleutian Islands, where they attacked a force of 45,000 Americans with fewer than 9,000, and took possession of two small, frigid islands inhabited by by the native Unangax people. This accomplished precisely nothing except to get half the Japanese force killed (and over 1000 American and Canadian soldiers), and the Japanese dragged the native peoples off to Hokkaido because… I actually don’t know why. It didn’t really make any sense then or now, but they were perpetrating war crimes for no clear reason.
Given this reality, it’s hard to see how any serious invasion of Hawaii would have been possible. The Japanese would have been facing a much more determined defence, far more troops, and needed to establish overwhelming immediate superiority while surrendering all initiative everywhere else. American forces could have held out for some time, while our fleets would have been able to pin down the IJN at attack with considerable advantage.