Marines defeated on Guadalcanal & the Japanese retake the island

[joho6411]

Hello all. Just had a simple thought that I thought some of the WWII experts could possibly answer for me. I generally remain in the pre-1900 forum. I expect that the US will still beat Japan in the end however. What I want to know is if the US 1st Marine Division and the other troops are overrun by the Japanese and they retake the island, how does the island hopping campaign differ and what are the other potential changes that happens if we (the U.S.) lose Guadalcanal to the Japanese. I look forward to the replies. Thanks, Joho

[Shaby]

IMHO, Japanese are simply not capable to win here. There may have been an instant or two where it may have been touch and go in the beginning of the campaign, but the crisis ended almost as soon as it started. Point is US Navy can supply and support the troops better.

Even in wholly unlikely case the Japanese managed to achieve this, it would only make Americans come again a month later with more and defeat them in detail. Even defeat there would teach US a lot of lessons.

Island hopping was a separate campaign, IIRC with little to do with Guadalcanal.

[BlondieBC]

I think it is possible, just unlikely. Something as simple as an intel failure (good jap spy, bad communication discipline), the Japanese realized the task force is come, then successfully ambush the USN and kill the carriers quickly. Also fewer supplies and Marines make it ashore. Or throw in some other lucky break or odd butterfly such as IJN submarines see the taskforce coming.

I think a Japan win implies the USN can't reinforce, and therefore the American carriers are lost. It also implies substantial other losses. USA resumes in the spring of 1943 with the new ships new plane. It will slow down the USA timeline initially by 6 or so months, but over time, the amount of delay from ATL to OTL decreases.

Now since the Army opposed, and it was only approved since the Navy said it could do only with Navy resources, it has interesting political impacts. It gives the Army a powerful tool to fight its main enemy, the USN. I would not rule out such a Fiasco meaning that the Pacific falls under an United command - MacArthur or Marshall or another Army General. Marshall wanted a combat command, and after Pearl failing and Guadalcanal, he has a strong case for an Army General to be in charge.

[Rubicon]

The butterflies are actually vaster then first perceived.

No Guadalcanal campaign means at several things:
1) The entire Solomon islands campaign is halted, leaving only one venue of attack towards Japan, the central pacific.

2) No attrition of the Japanese pre-war naval air pilots, with greater losses in future carrier battles for the US navy.

3) Several Japanese ships sunk OTL are not sunk ITL, including quite many merchant ships.

[Bob in Pittsburgh]

You have to assume that the United States completes construction of the ships that it actually built. So my August 1945 there would have been 17 Essex class carriers, 9 Independence light carriers and 75 escort carriers of various classes. Couple that with 10 modern battleships 7 Baltimore class heavy cruisers, 24 Cleveland and Atlanta class light cruisers. I could go on but you get the idea. The “Big Blue Fleet” would overwhelm the IJN. While the battles may have been different the outcome would have been the same.

Remember that the campaign up the “Slot” was premised on extending land based air. By 1944 the carriers could easily have operated in support of taking any island.

In the immediate aftermath I think you would have seen a reverse USN campaign to pound down Henderson Field. You might have seen naval battles not all that dissimilar to those that took place as the IJN tried to intervene and reinforce.

Defeat at Guadalcanal would have increased McArthur’s prestige/bargaining position. More forces would have been allocated to McArthur. I would assume he would continue with the New Guinea campaign and then perhaps a push to towards the northern Solomon Islands.

Politically I would assume this would have hurt Roosevelt and the democrats in the 1942 elections.

[Rick the Librarian]

Maybe 6 months to a year delay in the inevitable - a U.S. victory.

[Dan]

Rick - could it actually speed things up?
If conventional forces are proving less effective, would there be an argument for pushing more funding for the Manhatten Project and it speeding up? Even a month or so's difference could have huge butterflies.

[sharlin]

It would be a bloody and painful victory for the IJA and IJN if they did manage to force the Allies off Guadalcanal but in reality it does not alter the Japanese's chances of doing anything. It adds a few months to the war in the east at most.

[Advernt]

I'm waiting for someone to try to seriously suggest a Red Hokkaido.

[Snake Featherston]

The absolute and only way this works is if the USA really, really screws up the initial landing leading to a defeat so rapid and quick that the existing censorship covers up any legacy of the defeat. Japan wins this quickly or it gets smashed up in an attrition battle. And given the existent censorship policies, the USA actually isn't as affected by a defeat like this as you'd think, it was only during the attrition phase that Guadalcanal capitalized on the US imagination. Instead you see Milne Bay become Ironbottom Sound and the breaking of the Japanese war effort happens in New Guinea.

[HMS Warspite]

Technically the US Marines were already dropped on Guadalcanal, with alomost no supplies and it was a wonder they survived to win the victory over there at all. Most credit to this wonder is going to the japanese, who simply failed to see the importance and the scale of operations on the Solomons, until it was too late (after the US had won the control over Guadalcanal and hold a firm grip on Henderson Field).

If the Japanese had pushed back the first assault in force, the second would still push them out of there, although not likely within a short time. So the capture of Guadalcanal and the Solomons would be delayed by a year or so and the fighting would be worse, more like the one on Iwo Jima, or Okinawa, as the Japanese would certainly have organised some defense by that time.

Another possibility is to have the Allies decide to bypass the Solomons and go directly through the center of the Japanese outer defense ring, via the Mashall and Mariana's, which always had been the strategic idea of the Central Pacific Command of Nimitz. This would certainly not have favoured Mac Arthur and possibly have lead to his demise from the scene early on, but the war possibly would have had been a bit shorter and less bloody, due to the avoiding of the Solomon and possibly the Philippine Campaign. (The last one was a Mac Arthur thing to do and was originally not supported by Nimitz.) Nimitz wanted the Masrhall Islands to launch the bombingcampaign against the Japanese homeislands and bomb the enemy into submission (Which historically was the case already, as Japan was very vulnerable to this sort of bombingraids. Even without the nuclear bombs, Japan was on the point of being breached in august 1945, simply due to the constant bombing of its cities and industries.)