US Deploying Troops to SE Asia in late 1942

A question has arisen in my mind as a result of a discussion on another thread about the British holding Malaya at the start of 1942.
Assuming for one reason or another that the original timeline's 'Germany first' policy has been shelved by the middle of 1942 for reasons of political and public opinion in the United States, and that the US wants to send troops to Malaya (which the British plus allies in this timeline have managed to hold up to the start of the monsoon season) what would be the most logical means for the US to get troops to Malaya?
Would they be sent by ship all the way, or would it be faster and less risky (assuming the Japanese are operating in waters North of Australia and East of Sumatra) to ship troops to Sydney, put them on trains there for transport by rail across Australia, and move them by ship from the west coast of Australia up to Malaya?

Background information (in case it should be pertinent):
The British and allies are assumed to have held Sumatra, Singapore, and Malaya. East of there, the Japanese have still taken a large bite out of the Dutch East Indies.

The 1942 naval battle of Midway is assumed to have been butterflied away, with the result that any Japanese and US vessels sunk there in the original timeline may well be intact and still afloat, when transport of U.S. troops to Malaya begins in this timeline.

There is no 'Operation Torch' in North Africa. At most, the US has sent a couple of armoured divisions (round the Cape of Good Hope) to Egypt.

Wouldn't it be more logical for the US to try to hold out in the Philippines and/or DEI than send troops to Malaya?

Short answer?

Look More Closely Later said:

Assuming for one reason or another that the original timeline's 'Germany first' policy has been shelved by the middle of 1942 for reasons of political and public opinion in the United States, and that the US wants to send troops to Malaya (which the British plus allies in this timeline have managed to hold up to the start of the monsoon season) what would be the most logical means for the US to get troops to Malaya?

Click to expand...

Short answer?

Germany First would not be shelved; Germany was far more of a threat to the United States than Japan ever could be.

There's a reason the Manhattan Project got underway; it wasn't because of the state of Japanese physics, chemistry, biology, or aeronautics.

And the US did, in fact, deploy troops in SEA in 1942; 2nd Battalion, 131st Field Artillery fought in Java.

Best,

Hmm

MattII said:

Wouldn't it be more logical for the US to try to hold out in the Philippines and/or DEI than send troops to Malaya?

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I'm assuming that for whatever reason (not enough naval strength, to force hostile waters?) that an attempt to directly relieve the Philippines wasn't made in the Original timeline, that it wouldn't be in this one.
Also that the U.S. wants to secure the Burma Road and keep supplies moving overland into China. (As in the original timeline, the Japanese have got far enough into Burma to at least cut the road; I'm in two minds, if with Malaya still in, the Japanese would have pressed further into Burma, or tried to form a stable front and/or build reserves for another attempt on Malaya.)
I suppose without Torch, they might try for reopening the Burma Road and some sort of Dutch East Indies action.

Germany first could have potentially been completely scrapped

TFSmith121 said:

Short answer?

Germany First would not be shelved; Germany was far more of a threat to the United States than Japan ever could be.

There's a reason the Manhattan Project got underway; it wasn't because of the state of Japanese physics, chemistry, biology, or aeronautics.

And the US did, in fact, deploy troops in SEA in 1942; 2nd Battalion, 131st Field Artillery fought in Java.

Best,

Click to expand...

In the opinion of one senior British officer, Germany first might have been shelved - if not completely abandoned - in mid-1942 in the original timeline, at least according to what Churchill reported in his memoirs after the war.
Shortly before a visit to the UK by senior American military officers (including Marshall), Churchill received a communication from Field-Marshal Dill (then in the USA) dated 15 July 42, part of which ran as follows:

...King's war is against the Japanese.
I have a feeling (based on nothing more than the American thought that the Pacific could be a substitute for "Bolero" and the strong American desire to build up an army of seven millions) that there are highly placed Americans who do not believe that anything better than a stalemate with Germany is possible.
May I suggest with all respect that you must convince your visitors that you are determined to beat the Germans, that you will strike them on the continent of Europe at the earliest possible moment even on a limited scale, and that anything which detracts from this main effort will receive no support from you at all?...

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...Unless you can convince him of your unswerving devotion to "Bolero" everything points to a complete reversal of our present agreed strategy and the withdrawal of America to a war of her own in the Pacific...

Click to expand...

The Second World War, Volume 4, pages 396-397. (1951 edition)
Edit:
'him' in the second section quoted being Marshall.

Anyway, back on topic

TFSmith121 said:

Short answer?

Germany First would not be shelved; Germany was far more of a threat to the United States than Japan ever could be.

There's a reason the Manhattan Project got underway; it wasn't because of the state of Japanese physics, chemistry, biology, or aeronautics.

And the US did, in fact, deploy troops in SEA in 1942; 2nd Battalion, 131st Field Artillery fought in Java.

Best,

Click to expand...

Anyway, back on topic, I take it that the 131st field artillery would have been part of the ABDA forces, operational in early 1942 before the monsoon season?

Look More Closely Later said:

I'm assuming that for whatever reason (not enough naval strength, to force hostile waters?) that an attempt to directly relieve the Philippines wasn't made in the Original timeline, that it wouldn't be in this one.
Also that the U.S. wants to secure the Burma Road and keep supplies moving overland into China. (As in the original timeline, the Japanese have got far enough into Burma to at least cut the road; I'm in two minds, if with Malaya still in, the Japanese would have pressed further into Burma, or tried to form a stable front and/or build reserves for another attempt on Malaya.)
I suppose without Torch, they might try for reopening the Burma Ro0ad and some sort of Dutch East Indies action.

Click to expand...

For the usa securing the philippines has more value for them politically than securing something other than the Philippines in SEA.

It is even more practical to either go direct to Japan or retake or hold Philippines than going farther to Burma.

Had Burma, malaya and East Indies were all usa colonies, they might. But since they are not, there is no reason to take those colonies.

Most importantly, by is time, most filipinos were loyal to the Americans like the usa citizen. All other SEa nations were not. So taking them will be harder and will take more resources. How fast would usa take indonesia if Sukarno were bottling the Americans down. It's not like these colonies were blindly loyal to their previous colonial masters or to the Allies.

They Philippines are also well-positioned to interrupt the flow of resources to and from the Southern Resource Area (especially the Eastern DEI). Hells, it's why they wanted them in the first place. I mean it's less than a thousand km from Hong Kong to Dagupan, which given the 20,000 km range of the Gato class would mean a lot of time on patrol. Also, from central Luzon you could bomb most of Taiwan (it's only slightly further from Dagupan to Taipei than from London to Berlin).

There are no trains for transport across Australia, so that option is out.

If Malaya and Sumatra hold, you can't have one without the other, then the best way would be to run troops down the Malacca Strait.

Britain has plenty of bodies in CBI, without losing ~130,000 POW in the fall of Singapore. Not sure that either London wants Washington's aid there; I am pretty sure that FDR would be glad of not having to offer it as well, as support for colonial empires is not a winning move in US politics of the 1940s. I think it's actually very difficult to get a stalemate in Malaya - if Yamashita doesn't win, he's probably going to be rolled back to the Thai border, at which point it becomes a political question as to whether the British Empire will stop there or go for FIC as well.

Given, well, MacArthur, without an ASCB (Alien Space CalBear) to drop a meteor on him or something, the US involvement in the south-west Pacific willl be to ship army and marine units to Australia, where they can finish training up, and then commence the reconquest of some of the DEI. The question of Dutch colonialism vs Indonesian independence is far less important than the overwhelmingly-more-important strategic goal of getting Mac a command that will result in victories he can take the credit for.

Nimitz can go and putz about with Wake, Guam, Saipan, and those unimportant things like getting air bases built on the way, but Mac knows that the real (i.e. career-enhancing) action will be in the re-invasion of the Philippines - which requires liberating some of the DEI (Celebes, Timor, Ambon, etc) to support the landings on Mindanao to follow, for...

MAC SHALL RETURN!

Ever think about why Marshall and Dill

Look More Closely Later said:

In the opinion of one senior British officer, Germany first might have been shelved - if not completely abandoned - in mid-1942 in the original timeline, at least according to what Churchill reported in his memoirs after the war.
Shortly before a visit to the UK by senior American military officers (including Marshall), Churchill received a communication from Field-Marshal Dill (then in the USA) dated 15 July 42, part of which ran as follows:
The Second World War, Volume 4, pages 396-397. (1951 edition)
Edit:
'him' in the second section quoted being Marshall.

Click to expand...

Ever think about why Marshall and Dill got along?

Best,

GarethC said:

Britain has plenty of bodies in CBI, without losing ~130,000 POW in the fall of Singapore. Not sure that either London wants Washington's aid there; I am pretty sure that FDR would be glad of not having to offer it as well, as support for colonial empires is not a winning move in US politics of the 1940s. I think it's actually very difficult to get a stalemate in Malaya - if Yamashita doesn't win, he's probably going to be rolled back to the Thai border, at which point it becomes a political question as to whether the British Empire will stop there or go for FIC as well.

Given, well, MacArthur, without an ASCB (Alien Space CalBear) to drop a meteor on him or something, the US involvement in the south-west Pacific willl be to ship army and marine units to Australia, where they can finish training up, and then commence the reconquest of some of the DEI. The question of Dutch colonialism vs Indonesian independence is far less important than the overwhelmingly-more-important strategic goal of getting Mac a command that will result in victories he can take the credit for.

Nimitz can go and putz about with Wake, Guam, Saipan, and those unimportant things like getting air bases built on the way, but Mac knows that the real (i.e. career-enhancing) action will be in the re-invasion of the Philippines - which requires liberating some of the DEI (Celebes, Timor, Ambon, etc) to support the landings on Mindanao to follow, for...

MAC SHALL RETURN!

Click to expand...

Also millions of American citizens and tens of thousands of POWs being starved to death. But people always leave that part out of reasons for making the Phillipines priority.

Mac was dick but leaving the PI to whither on the vine and face even more horrific starvation and abuse by the Japanese would probably be deeply unpopular post war and during the war the opposite was true.

Updates

As far as I understand Japan had a different army (15th, under Shōjirō Iida) in Burma from in Malaya (25th, under Tomoyuki Yamashita), so Britain and allies managing to defeat the 25th army and hold Malaya/Singapore/Sumatra would not guarantee their ability to remove Japan from Burma.

However, given how important the Philippines are politically to the USA, assume that their liberation is the main goal of a US action commencing in-theatre in late 1942.
Is the best method of approach to the Philippines:
1) via Malaya/Thailand/French Indochina?
2) striking east from Sumatra into Java and then pushing up through the Borneo?
3) north from Australia/New Guinea?

And in case 1 or 2, do I understand correctly that American troops would ideally be moved to their starting off points by sailing around the south side of Australia, keeping them away from contested waters where they might more likely meet enemy submarines/air-attacks?

Look More Closely Later said:

Background information (in case it should be pertinent): The British and allies are assumed to have held Sumatra, Singapore, and Malaya. East of there, the Japanese have still taken a large bite out of the Dutch East Indies.

Click to expand...

If the British have held Malaya and Singapore along with Sumatra to secure their flank/rear wouldn't that likely also mean they would be able to hold on to a large chunk of Burma as well? IIRC part of the troops used in the invasion were transferred over after the fall of Singapore. There would also be the risk of extending themselves too far and in the wrong direction since all their main goals are in the opposite direction.

As GarethC mentioned without the surrender of Singapore and things going better the Commonwealth forces won't be losing the 50,000 men as prisoners of war they did in our timeline during the Malayan campaign and the further 85-120,000 further men at Singapore. With that many forces already in Malaya I do have to wonder whether there would be the facilities to absorb and space to effectively deploy large numbers of extra American troops as well, fighter and bomber squadrons would likely be readily accepted though. There's the nationalist prestige factor of potentially not wanting to have to call on foreign help to defend your own colonial territories, plus the US' attitudes on the European colonial empires and their not wanting to fight to re-establish them as happened in our timeline.

Thanks and please lock.

Thanks to those who commented on this thread. Could a moderator please lock it?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Look More Closely Later
In the opinion of one senior British officer, Germany first might have been shelved - if not completely abandoned - in mid-1942 in the original timeline, at least according to what Churchill reported in his memoirs after the war.
Shortly before a visit to the UK by senior American military officers (including Marshall), Churchill received a communication from Field-Marshal Dill (then in the USA) dated 15 July 42, part of which ran as follows:
The Second World War, Volume 4, pages 396-397. (1951 edition)
Edit:
'him' in the second section quoted being Marshall.

TFSmith121 said:

Ever think about why Marshall and Dill got along?

Best,

Click to expand...

Dill was pushing his own agenda as well. When I started researching British stratigic plans 1940-43 it was a suprise to learn Dill had favored a early return to the continent from the start. He had approved contacts with the Vichy army & had a plan prepared for emergency shipments of supplies to the Vichy army should Franco German hostilities emerge. He backed the concept of aggresive raids around the edge of western Europe, and he had invasion plans prepared. When he was removed from the CIGS post in mid 1942 there was a staff section in the UK doing nothing but preparing invasion plans for 1942. One of those plans was actually completed before the project was shut down after Brooke took over.

So its no suprise Dill was sensitive to any diversion of effort from a cross Channel attack.