Longer Lasting Pacific War Pods

Wing_Silver

As the title suggest. What pods, roads not taken, could have extended the war with Imperial Japan?

I know Japan could never win a total war against the massive and more industrial powers; But similar threads usually just cover the longest possible extension of the conflict.

Does anyone know of some realistic pods that might extend the war for Japan that will not involve alien space-bats or a pure ASB wank?

In this scenerio relations between East and West must sour as they did otl; Japan is still in protracted war with China, and attacking holdings and interest of other powers as they did. And war with the US still occurs.

Thank you and with much respect.
 
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Magnum

The Americans get a really short early warning regarding Pearl Harbour. The fleet sallies, but the last battleship to exit is still stuck in the narrow passageway out of the harbour when the planes arrive, and is sunk, thus rendering Pearl Harbour useless as a naval base.

A lot of the other battleships are sent to the bottom with catastrophic loss of life, and the japs also loose some more planes.

In the alternate engagements in the Coral Sea, the Japanese get far more bang for their buck, sinking 2 US Carriers with only one ligth carrier lost, capture Port Moresby and trap remainig alied forces in New Guineea and also land and take the allied base at Darwin in Australia.

At Midway, another 2 US carriers are sunk, though insufficient preparation means the IJN marines fail to take the island (which turns out to be a blessing in disguise)

Again in the Coral Sea, the US attempt to counterattack at Guadalcanal to stop the airfield from being completed fails badly, and most of the Marine division is lost.

I guess this should set the US back a couple of months at least.
 
Dan

Dan

I guess the most obvious one is that the A Bomb fizzles.
If the Manhatten project follows the same path as the German project, or theire's a miscalculation in the physics, even as little as a decimal point in the wrong place, no A Bomb and there's a good chance that the Allies have to mount Operation Olympic and invade Japan.

How close to ASB that is, I don't know.
 
Cook

Cook

Banned
Dan said:
If the Manhatten project follows the same path as the German project, or...How close to ASB that is, I don't know.
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It isn’t ASB at all; prior to Mark Oliphant’s trip to America, the American atomic program was looking principally at the use of atomic power for submarines, and there is a string of calculations and experiments in the early stages of the Manhattan Project that, if errors in the experiment hadn’t been discovered, or if impurities in the materials hadn’t been noticed, could have delayed the production of a working bomb for well over a year, if not longer.

Magnum said:
and take the allied base at Darwin in Australia.
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The time to take Darwin was immediately following their air attack on 19 February 1942.

Darwin was seen by both sides as an extension to the Dutch East Indies; it was included in the ABDACOM area and was the southern point on the Malay Barrier: the necessary line of defence of Australia and was recognised as such by the British, Australian and American High Commands prior to the war.

For the Japanese it was critical for the defence of their new possessions in South-East Asia. With Darwin and its surrounds in allied hands the D.E. Indies, Malaya and Borneo were all vulnerable to air and sea attack. The Japanese IOTL chose to neutralise this threat by ‘using a hammer to crack an egg’; employing the strike carriers that three months earlier attacked Pearl Harbour to launch an even larger air attack on Darwin and following it up with heavy bombers based in Ambon. They followed this up with repeated air raids for the next two years.

Just prior to the fall of Singapore in February 1942, General Yamashita submitted a proposal to invade and occupy Darwin and its surrounds, recognising that air attacks alone, no matter how successful, could not eliminate permanently the threat. This would have employed troops then on their way to Bali and Timor and the land and carrier based aircraft that were presently in the area, against which the allies had no more than a dozen P-40 Kittyhawks, a couple of B-17s and three heavy anti-aircraft guns. Landings in late February 1942 would have built on the disorder and confusion of the collapsing Allied command in Java. Yamashita’s plan called for a force of a division to be landed on the coast near Daly River Station and push inland towards Adelaide River and from there north – a total distance of two hundred kilometres, taking Darwin from the landward side. The coastal conditions were well known to the Japanese; in fact they had better maps of the north of Australia than the Australians had.

Once Darwin was in Japanese hands there would have been no possibility of conducting the air raids on South-East Asia that continually hindered Japanese efforts to get the Indonesian oil industry operational, or exports of other strategic resources from E.S. Asian ports that were obstructed by mines dropped by Australian and American B-17s. Nor would the commando raids that tied down so many Japanese troops in the region, 20,000 in Timor alone, have been possible. Japanese bombers operating from Darwin and Batchelor airfields could have hit any target in Queensland down as far as Brisbane, including the docks in Brisbane and Townsville where vitally important war supplies were being unloaded. In the west they could hit any target down to Exmouth, threatening to sever the air link to India. Such bombers could have operated unescorted and unhindered with no Australian modern fighter aircraft closer than Egypt, no more than twenty American P-40s transiting Australia on their way to Java, and only 17 heavy anti-aircraft guns in the entire country.

Once taken Darwin would have been secure: it could not be attacked from the south and an amphibious invasion would have to come from either the east or west. East would have to brave the narrows of the Torres Straits, where they’d have been sitting ducks to air attack from Darwin and Ambon and would have been well beyond the island hopping operations the allies conducted along the New Guinea coastline. An attack from the west would have been equally beyond the range of Allied air support without first building up a string of new bases along the west coast, or otherwise equally vulnerable to prolonged air attack before approaching Darwin.

Far from being at the end of a long supply line vulnerable to air and sea attack, Darwin would have been the anchor that secured Japan’s sea lanes in South East Asia from allied air attacks. It would have substantially changed the Pacific campaign in 1942 and ’43 if not longer.

Possession of Darwin would have made taking Moresby unnecessary, and would have made retaking Northern Papua New Guinea politically unfeasible while Darwin was still in Japanese hands; the A.I.F. divisions returning from North Africa would have instead been employed in an offensive to retake Darwin before any operations beyond Australia could be considered. The Australian A.I.F. and militia divisions represented the bulk of groud forces fighting the Japanese in the Pacific until 1944. (Excluding the Chinese)

As a small note, there would also have been no air evacuation of MacArthur from the Philippine Islands.
 
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Shaby

As soon as fully equipped, battle ready formations confront IJA, it is game over for them. The Japanese could never advance to Port Moresby. IJA lacked the doctrine and equipment to do it. Landing in Darwin (or anywhere in Australia) is out of the question. Both Japanese Navy and Army opposed it.

The inherent flaws of IJN all but guarantee that they will meet defeat the moment they get into a decisive battle with US fleet. Japanese carrier doctrine is inferior, their technology is inferior, their carrier design is inferior to US. They could defeat US carriers only by pure luck and if the US carriers are caught absolutely unaware. Under the weight of coordinated US attack, Kido Butai will always infer crippling losses. They lack radar, their CAP procedures and doctrine are deficient and their ack-ack guns on carriers are unable to engage dive bombers.

Bear in mind, however, that Japan made the transition from feudal, pre-industrial society to modern one very quickly. They lacked industry and raw materials to make too much changes in their war making capability. This fact, for example, resulted in design compromises on their carriers, making the ships very prone to light up if hit.

There are in fact many ways to make Japanese last shorter and not too much of them to make them last longer. Even with a POD(s) in the early 20th century, not much can be changed. If you want to end up with Japan that has motive and forces to attack US and European possessions.
 

Magnum

Shaby said:
As soon as fully equipped, battle ready formations confront IJA, it is game over for them. The Japanese could never advance to Port Moresby. IJA lacked the doctrine and equipment to do it. Landing in Darwin (or anywhere in Australia) is out of the question. Both Japanese Navy and Army opposed it.

The inherent flaws of IJN all but guarantee that they will meet defeat the moment they get into a decisive battle with US fleet. Japanese carrier doctrine is inferior, their technology is inferior, their carrier design is inferior to US. They could defeat US carriers only by pure luck and if the US carriers are caught absolutely unaware. Under the weight of coordinated US attack, Kido Butai will always infer crippling losses. They lack radar, their CAP procedures and doctrine are deficient and their ack-ack guns on carriers are unable to engage dive bombers.

Bear in mind, however, that Japan made the transition from feudal, pre-industrial society to modern one very quickly. They lacked industry and raw materials to make too much changes in their war making capability. This fact, for example, resulted in design compromises on their carriers, making the ships very prone to light up if hit.

There are in fact many ways to make Japanese last shorter and not too much of them to make them last longer. Even with a POD(s) in the early 20th century, not much can be changed. If you want to end up with Japan that has motive and forces to attack US and European possessions.
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Their eyes also make them crappy pilots...
 

sharlin

Banned
Considering that the IJA did absolutely everything on a shoestring budget there's next to no way for them to invade and occupy Darwin, and conquering Australia is up there with Sealion succeeding or politely asking the tide to stop coming in and expecting it to work.

The IJN's successes were due to its well trained personnel and the fact that when they fought they ALWAYS brought superior forces in terms of raw numbers to the dust up, when they encountered a foe with roughly equal forces (Coral Sea) they fared poorly.

The only way the war can drag on in the east is if there's no manhattan project and the Allies are forced to invade Japan.

Doctrinally their use of Carriers was a world first and worked well but they were let down on technical issues (poor AA guns, no radar or a willingness to persue it it was a Japanese officer who said 'mens eyes seem good enough' in regards to the chance to develop radar after all) and absolutely terrible damage control that seemed to plague the IJN through the whole war. Other doctrine was poor, they didn't learn from the war even when it was going in their favour. For example when a flight of RAF Blenheim bombers attacked the Akagi in their indian ocean trip the IJN did absolutely sweet FA to tighten up the control of their CAP. The IJN also never improved its AA guns or direction systems. Relying on just adding more and more inadequate weapons in the vain hope that it would help rather than develop new weapons which were desperately needed.
 
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Cook

Cook

Banned
Wing_Silver said:
Does anyone know of some realistic pods that might extend the war for Japan...
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There is also that fact that, although the island chains were referred to as the defence sphere, very little defensive preparations were undertaken on the secured islands until shortly before the allied counter attacks, as was noted with astonishment by a German army liaison officer who toured the Pacific in late 1942. Considering the results in places where local commanders did prepare before hand, had serious preparations been made to defend the Japanese positions on other islands, the butcher’s bill would have been enormous and meant a very long war.
 

Shaby

Magnum said:
Their eyes also make them crappy pilots...
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They were good... Nay... Excellent pilots. It was the problem of their entire doctrine and technology. The battle of Midway was almost a foregone conclusion. It only took Japanese to confront first class US pilots to be defeated in their first engagement.

Akagi, Kaga, Hiryu and Soryu couldn't engage dive bombers with their AA batteries. The Japanese CAP was disorganized and depended on individual chotai leaders to make decision and prioritize threats. Fighter pilots are notoriously bad at this. The entire CAP was drawn into battle with US fighter squadron under John Thach. While at it, their carriers were sunk by US dive bombers nobody aboard Japanese ships noticed, because they were all concentrated in one direction. Their ships succumbed to hits of one or two bombs.

This sort of thing was bound to happen wherever the Japanese engaged full might of US fleet without either surprise or absolute supremacy in numbers.

Mind you, wherever Japanese engaged US marines that were battle ready and fully equipped and supplied, they invariably lost.
 
Cook

Cook

Banned
sharlin said:
Considering that the IJA did absolutely everything on a shoestring budget there's next to no way for them to invade and occupy Darwin...
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Despite having more than enough troops on board ship and about to make landings in Timor and Bali, which are both less than a day’s sailing from Daly River? And despite having their four largest aircraft carriers and a hundred heavy bombers within range of Darwin?

Presumably the three heavy anti aircraft guns and ten Kittyhawks are just going to be too overwhelming. You’ll not I haven’t mentioned the Australian Army’s defenses of Darwin and the Top End, that’s because in February 1942 there weren’t any.
 

Shaby

Cook said:
Considering the results in places where local commanders did prepare before hand, had serious preparations been made to defend the Japanese positions on other islands, the butcher’s bill would have been enormous and meant a very long war.
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Iwo Jima - <7000 US casualties. 22.000 Japanese of 22.000 present.
Okinawa - <13000 US casualties. 95.000 Japanese of 120.000
Saipan - 3.000+ US casualties. Little short of 30.000 Japanese, of 30.000 garrison
Guadalcanal - 7.000+ US casualties. 31.000 Japanese
Kokoda track - 600+ Australian casualties. 6.500 Japanese.

US was prepared to take any amount of casualties to defeat the Japanese. Considering that Saipan, Iwo Jima and Okinawa were very well prepared, loses were still very loopsided.
 

sharlin

Banned
Any invasion would have eventually failed, they could no doubt attack and seize the town but the carriers can't remain there for ever, they were needed elsewhere and would have been gobbling precious fuel as well as exhausting their pilots and machines with constant ops. When the Australian army counter attacked the IJA would probably not be able to call upon the IJN for help and would have been trapped.
 
Cook

Cook

Banned
sharlin said:
When the Australian army counter attacked the IJA would probably not be able to call upon the IJN for help and would have been trapped.
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That would be the Australian Army that was still in North Africa at the time, and you may want to try looking at a map at some stage.
 

sharlin

Banned
Also re those battles the sheer disparity of equipment was massively telling. US infantry forces were better equipped and for the most part, at company and regimental level better lead. The IJA's soldiers were exceptionally tough and brave beyond any measure but they were little better equipped than a WW1 soldier but in most cases their tactics were uninspired, simple and badly handled.
The Japanese Army excelled when they could plan properly, when forced to react to an enemies moves they generally fared poorly.
 

sharlin

Banned
Cook said:
That would be the Australian Army that was still in North Africa at the time, and you may want to try looking at a map at some stage.
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*pats on the head* Calm down.

Better? Good i'll continue.

Even if there was next to no forces in Australia to defend it, are you seriously contending that Australia could be conquered by the IJA? And that troops would not be routed back towards Australia or diverted if they were American troops?
 
Fearless Leader

Fearless Leader

Donor
That's an interesting proposal. Just to clarify, instead of invading Bali/Timor the Japanese attack Darwin instead? You wouldn't happen to have a source would you?

The real question is how long would it take for the Allies to retake Darwin. I think once it falls, it's going to become the strategic focal point for the foreseeable future. Especially when Japanese bombers are ranging across Australia with relative impunity. To me however, the land route is the most obvious one to take, building roads to Darwin and then retaking it.

It could also lead to serious disruptions in the Mediterranean, especially if the Japanese begin bombing other cities in Australia...
 
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CT23

Could the third wave have been launched at Pearl Harbor to attack the fleet oil tanks and sub pens?
 

King Augeas

sharlin said:
*pats on the head* Calm down.

Better? Good i'll continue.

Even if there was next to no forces in Australia to defend it, are you seriously contending that Australia could be conquered by the IJA? And that troops would not be routed back towards Australia or diverted if they were American troops?
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He's talking about Darwin, not Australia. As I understand it, Darwin was so isolated from the rest of Australia that it's not unreasonable to regard it as just another island.
 
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