Not necessarily. It was, would probably still have been, Germany first. Perhaps the island hopping campaign starts later. Maybe there is no Guadalcanal or Guadalcanal gets delayed. Hey, maybe there’s no Iron Bottom Sound as the US doesn’t loose so many cruiser/destroyer assets in the night actions of 42/43!
Or maybe the defeat helps focus American strategic and operational planning in the Pacific, and they become hyper-focused on the central Pacific instead of stroking MacArthur’s ego and letting him slog his way through the South Pacific and on to liberate the Philippines?
I can sort of wrap my head around something like the OP, which might as well be reframed as, “Did the Japanese have enough forces to take Midway without (or even with) the carriers it lost?” Not so much a counterfactual, then, as a straightforward enough question about what it takes to seize an island with a set number of defenders, a landing force of known size, other historical landings that we can draw on for comparison, etc., etc.
I know the US had a Germany first policy but clearly the US was expending a lot of resources in the Pacific too. The focus may have been on Europe but the Pacific theater was happening at the same time and consuming a lot of resources. The US was not ignoring it. If things were going bad there it is likely the US would have diverted some effort to the Pacific theater and that has to come from somewhere.
I think these best part was when McClellan was handed the MAGIC intercepts and boasted “Here is a paper with which, if I cannot whip Isoroku Yamamoto, I will be willing to go home.”
This appears to be a comment made in hindsight as reconnaissance was really at the very early stages of development. Is there a particular reason that of all the mistakes in the Japan chain of command, arguably, including the entire mission, that this warrants being called out, other than it’s something easy to grab onto for counterfactuals?
Later in the war, Japan went with a two phase search pattern, but this was only the second carrier battle of the war, and only one month after the first one where both sides had many mistakes. There was too much area to search and the Japanese had too few planes. The weather sucked and both sides were missing things. Identification of ships wasn’t great, both sides missed ships and misidentified ships, and gave vague reports.
Japanese war doctrine also played a part. They were overly oriented to offensive, and didn’t dedicate enough resources to other aspects.
What additional resources and when? They already had enough ships coming down the pipeline that they would not have built any more.
The New Guinea campaign was what it was. It wasn’t going to absorb a significant number of additional troops.
It would not have taken years more to get the Japanese to surrender, maybe months longer, assuming other additional bits of luck didn’t go for the US. This would not have been a complete game changer.
Knowing where the enemy is goes waaaaay back before the Battle of Midway. Not a new concept at all and neglecting or ignoring that would be a major fault. Nothing new here at all. I cannot imagine the Japanese commanders were not aware of its value. Kinda War-101.
Not sure what you are arguing. I was responding to a post that said resources were prioritized for the European theater. And they were.
While the US had massive capacity to produce war materials they were still finite and had to be allocated.
Is your argument that they were neglecting it or ignoring it? And if so, how?
You said, and I quote:
So I am asking you what more resources would need go the the Pacific war that didn’t go to the since the US won. We know what resources went in the real history. What additional resources would be sent? And why?
I think they were neglectful of it. Certainly they knew its value. We know because they launched reconnaissance planes. But whether they felt they had the element of surprise or whether they felt invincible or something else I do not know. Maybe it just was not apparent how woeful their search had been.
Certainly this oversight should have been enough to crucify those commanders. They absolutely knew better but ignored it. Again, battlefield intelligence is an age old fact of war. Absolutely nothing new here. Overconfidence probably ruined them in this case.
I was responding to another poster.
If the Japanese prevailed at Midway that likely would mean they had most of their carriers intact and may well have sunk more than one US carrier. Not to mention maybe holding Midway which the US would need to re-take before continuing on towards Japan. And, of course, Japan could take that time to reinforce what they had already taken in the Pacific.
So, the US would need to build more stuff to defeat the Japanese.
I believe @TokyoBayer’s point is that the resources the USN would need to defeat the IJN were already being built. To use the Essex-class carriers as an example, 13 of an eventual 32 had been ordered by the Midway, and three had been laid down; in fact, the lead ship was launched on 31 July, less than two months after the battle.
Had there been a pressing need for US capital ships in the Atlantic at this point in the war, there may have been a need for reallocation and (possibly) increased production. But as it was, the yards in the US were churning out ships at a rate previously thought impossible, most of them tagged for the Pacific.
This argument doesn’t appear to take into consideration the actual events but rather a supposed conclusion based conjecture rather than an informed position.
Certainly their search efforts were inadequate, but the point is that the entire operation was a bad failure. Everything said about the scouting can be said about the overall operation. The whole thing was a classic fuckup based on overconfidence, poor planning, and horrific strategic; the result of which was the destruction of two-thirds of the Kidobutai.
The only reason that scouting gets picked up for counterfactuals is that it’s convenient and doesn’t require an in-depth understanding of the larger picture. The what-ifs like things like this, because someone can point a finger and say they just should have increased the search pattern and then the entire war would be changed.
But life isn’t that simple. First, it takes a greater understanding of what is actually involved in the process and really, without even a basic knowledge of the events
If the problem was with the search, then who was it that was at fault? Was it the pilots? The person who designed the search? In this case, that was Minoru Genda, the famed architect of the Pearl Harbor raid. Or was it Chuichi Nagumo, the commander-in-chief of the First Air Fleet with the operational command of the attack. Or was it Yamamoto himself?
There is actually an interesting debate to be had, but it does require a familiarity with IJN strategies and the various doctrines. But fuck it, right? It’s just easier to blindly assume they, and we don’t care who “they” are, were incompetent.
This is exactly the point. Winning or losing at Midway would have not substantially changed the amount of resources required. By the end of the war, the US had added 27 fleet carriers and eight “fast battleships” as part of the 1,200 major combatant ships. built for the USN during the war.
A few of the carriers and battleships got cancelled because it was apparent that they were not required. If the war had gone on a few more month, would another couple major ships have been built? I suppose, but that would not have made a tinker’s damn to the European War.
Again, there could be an argument that additional resources would be required but that sort of argument sort of requires details and not just sort of vague, meaningless statements.
Japan was at the end of its possible logistics. It just didn’t have enough shipping to support the conquests it had, let alone substantially expand any further. It wasn’t likely to take and hold Midway.
The US would likely have lost the Solomons in late 1942, but the further Japan expanded its outer periphery, the weaker it got.
As far as recon, Japanese planes and subs were looking for something Nagumo and Yamamoto were already convinced was not there. When IJN officers representing the US fleet in war games put the carriers near Midway, they were chastised for doing something that would never happen in reality. The searches were almost just a formality.
Japanese possession of Midway might not extend the war at all, given the vast difference in production capacities. Heck, it might even shorten the war, because Midway might have become a bigger sinkhole for Japanese air, ground, and naval power than Guadalcanal became.
But in the lean times of 1942, the US losing Midway will be felt in other theaters. First, there’s carriers. A successful invasion of Midway requires air supremacy, so all 3 USN carriers, the 3 most powerful ships in the USN, have been sunk and Nagumo’s force is intact or nearly so. Now the US has only 1 carrier in the Pacific, Saratoga, with Wasp on the way. This shortage cannot be tolerated, so Ranger would likely follow Wasp thru the Panama, along with some escorts. The resulting late ‘42 US pacific carrier fleet of old Saratoga and 2 small carriers is notably less powerful than historical, and no match for 5-6 IJN carriers. Also, Ranger is now unavailable to the ETA. She was not critical to the war in Europe, but in November of ‘42, the invasion of North Africa will be missing its most powerful ship.
Then there’s the psychological effect of having a Hawaiian island in Japanese hands. From our perspective, this poses no serious threat to the other Hawaiian islands, but tell that to the Americans of 1942. I’d bet the islands would be reinforced more and faster than historical. Some of those extra guns, marines, soldiers, and shipping will come from the east coast, at the expense of the ETA.
Again, I don’t see it making much difference to either theater by 1945. The flood of men and materiel exported from the US in ‘43-‘45 shrinks the importance of 1942 events.
Reminds me of the run of episodes of The Office with the plot line that has Michael leaving DM to start his own paper company. Toward the end of the run, a financial adviser informs him (in the face of Ryan’s assurances, MBA and all) that because of how they have priced their paper, the more they grow, the bigger their losses will be, and the less time they have before going out of business. They can’t afford the logistical base that must come with growth.
If we were to play the counterfactual game along those lines, I could conceive of a world in which Japan succeeds at Midway, stretches itself out even further, and that the next move the US makes is delayed through an abundance of strategic caution to the point that Japan is that much weaker, and the US, even without distracting from the effort in Europe, is that much stronger, such that the reborn US carrier fleet sweeps across the Pacific like an avalanche (or rather tsunami) compared to its pace in actual history, particularly with its early movements. Doubly so if the loss at Midway focuses strategic thinking and operational planning such that MacArthur gets shut down early and told to get over himself, get behind the Navy, and support a single line of advance through the central Pacific, bypass most of the Philippines, and leave Japanese forces in the southern Pacific to whither, their supplies interdicted.
And because I can imagine that, I really struggle to take on alt-history. At some point, the risk of just making stuff up and asserting it as “most likely” for “reasons” gets to be too great.
You would fit in perfectly with the alt-hist fans here. Why bother research (if that’s what even reading a wiki page is called) when “most likely” and “reasons” are good enough? Bonus points if you continue to insist on your theory despite people repeatedly demonstrating why it couldn’t work.
I’ll go with aliens with space lasers, that would have been more probable.
This is actually the ideal counterfactual, because it does make perfect sense. Telling MacArthur to get over himself and actually doing these things would have been a much smarter option, saving time, lives and resources.
If ones doesn’t know or can’t be arsed to understand the reasons and background as to why things occurred, then simply thinking of a smarter option is “more likely” for “reasons.”
Brilliantly done. I think it will go over the head of many.
I think the scout plane issue is indicative of the general problem the Japanese had. They did not conduct the amount of scouting flights they should have because - according to their plan - the Americans would not be arriving until later. They figured they could sail to Midway and catch the island defenses by surprise. Then the Americans would send their navy in response to the attack and the Japanese would set up an ambush to defeat the American fleet as it came running at full speed to Midway.
The Japanese assumed they had full control of the initiative and the Americans would just be reacting. This was a dangerous, and as it turns out mistaken, assumption. It’s true that the Japanese had been controlling events in the early months of the war. But they should have seen that was a temporary state of affairs. And Coral Sea should have told them the period when they held all the initiative was passing.
The Japanese should not have relied on everything going according to their plans and should have considered other possibilities. They should have made contingency plans for the Americans doing unexpected things. That would have included gathering all the carriers for the battle, in case the Americans brought more carriers than expected, and doing heavy recon, in case the Americans were in an unexpected area.