The easy answer is that the Indian Ocean is an active theater that it was not at this time OTL and therefore it gets assets it did not get OTL. However, there is a backstory to this that will get explained in upcoming updates.
April 1942 Alternate Indian Ocean
- Thread starter Zheng He
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The easy answer is that the Indian Ocean is an active theater that it was not at this time OTL and therefore it gets assets it did not get OTL. However, there is a backstory to this that will get explained in upcoming updates.
1200 Hours, 2 November 1942, Truk Lagoon, Caroline Islands – During the morning of 2 November 1942, the damaged battleship Haruna and the damaged heavy cruiser Atago departed for Truk, their emergency repairs complete. The rest of Kondo’s heavy ships were already rallying at the Combined Fleet’s forward base including the damaged carriers Shokaku and Zuikaku, the damaged battleships Kongo and Hiei, and the damaged heavy cruiser Tone. They were joined by the carriers Junyo and Ryuho and the heavy cruisers Kumano, Haguro, Chikuma, and, Takao. The ships were replenishing and conducting repairs while they waited for the arrival of Haruna and Atago, due to arrive in two days.
0900 Hours, 3 November, Fremantle, Australia – Her torpedo damage patched up, the heavy cruiser HMS Cornwall departed Fremantle on 3 November bound for the busy repair yard at Sydney where she would join her damaged Australian and American sister ships. Also departing was the damaged freighter SS Ryder West. She had been patched up and was being sent to Exmouth Gulf to serve as a barracks ship for the growing base there. A few hours after Cornwall and Ryder West departed, the merchant cruiser HMCS Prince David arrived after her three day run from Port C. A few individuals who were rotating back to Australia disembarked from the ship while her crew say to her replenishment and the loading of supplies for the atoll. One individual stepping off of Prince David was the newly promoted Lieutenant Commander Alfred B. Tucker III. Tucker had been commanding the Phosphate Air Force’s Dauntless dive bomber squadron and was with the planes at Port C assisting with their depot maintenance. While at the atoll he received a message informing him of his promotion and ordering him to proceed to New Caledonia. He would soon be returning to the Eastern Fleet, but this time as the commanding officer of the escort carrier USS Copahee’s composite airwing. As soon as he stepped off the ship, a staff officer escorted him to a car where he was driven to the airbase and put on the next transport flight to Sydney.
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1200 Hours, 3 November 1942, Colombo Harbor, Ceylon – Six merchant ships escorted by the destroyers HMS Laforey and HMS Lightning and the light cruiser HMS Capetown arrived from Port C for a brief stopover in Colombo so the warships could refuel and take on stores. Six hours after arriving, the small convoy departed on the next leg of its voyage, a five-day transit to Chittagong to provide crucial supplies for the forces assembling in the Arakan.
1700 Hours, 3 November 1942, Shortland Anchorage, Bougainville – Rear Admiral Tanaka was not taking the destruction of the supply convoy as a sign that he should give up. The man known as “Tenacious” was determined to continue to be a thorn in the Allies’ side and was assembling a group of supply barges at the Shortland Anchorage at the southern end of Bougainville to run supplies down the Slot for the Japanese troops on Guadalcanal. Destroyers would tow the barges to New Georgia Island where they would then make the final run to Guadalcanal under the cover of darkness.
Sometime in December. ITTL and OTL the 1942 monsoon season lasted longer than usual.
Donald Reaver
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I do hope an attack on Truk is possible, the concentration of ships in a limited area sounds very tempting. Probably heavy losses on the attackers, but still carriers and capital ships compared to planes seems like a gamble worth taking.
That would be suicide. The Pacific Fleet has one fully operational carrier, one damaged carrier that can be repaired locally and kept operating but will need a yard period eventually, and Guadalcanal is still heavily contested. Truk also still has plenty of air defenses and is one of few Japanese bases with radar coverage.
You're not going to see Truk bombed until Nimitz can grind down the Japanese more, and not until he can throw at least five or six fleet carriers plus escorts at the base.
Keep in mind the premise of this timeline. It's not so much the Allies having more then OTL, it's a case of a couple commanders on the British side managing to outsmart, outthink, and outfight the Japanese, and successfully removing a number of key Japanese assets from the playing field while managing to avoid serious losses of their own forces. The fact that the fate of some Allied units has changed(sometimes for better, sometimes not) is more a butterfly effect then anything.
Don't make the mistake of looking at things with 20/20 hindsight. We the readers know the Japanese are loosing faster ITTL then OTL. From the in universe perspective of the 1942 military leaders, they've achieved great successes, but they've also taken quite significant losses. This most recent naval engagement saw the damage or loss of numerous vessels, including the loss of USS Wasp, USS Enterprise and other ships have suffered damage extensive enough to force them to return to Pearl Harbor or the west coast for repairs, Rear Admiral Daniel Callaghan has been killed in action, and a lot of aircraft have been shot down or damaged to the point of being written off and pushed over the side of the carriers, if if they managed to get to Henderson Field, likely being stripped for parts.
Speaking of the late RADM Callaghan, I noticed in one of the updates, correct me if I'm wrong, but Rear Admiral Norman Scott is still alive ITTL. It's believed that OTL his death may well have been at least partially due to friendly fire after his flagship, USS Atlanta, was hit by gunfire from Callaghan's own flagship, the heavy cruiser USS San Francisco. Here, while there is the likely possibility of more surface engagements around Guadalcanal and throughout the Solomons in general, that friendly fire incident obviously isn't going to happen. Scott was viewed by many as a quite capable flag officer, and in hindsight, it has been debated that if he had been placed in overall command during the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, instead of 2nd in command under Callaghan, that many of the costly mistakes and losses of that battle might have been avoided or at least mitigated somewhat.
Here, I doubt we're looking at another 4 or 5 star officer in the making, but if the butterfly effect has seen to Scott getting a new lease on life ITTL, he could go on to be a quite accomplished surface warfare officer, maybe even make Vice Admiral at some point.
Here Japan has had less success in securing the needed oil resources, and has lost more tankers than OTL. No matter what Truk's share of the petroleum supplies is going to be smaller than OTL, everything from bunker fuel to AVGAS, and the flow of even reduced supplies will be an issue due to the tanker issue which was a problem even before the first tanker was sunk. Truk will become less and less useful as supplies of petroleum and other essentials become scarcer. I don't know what the oil storage capacity at Truk was, but I would bet that once the war started the ability to build more storage at Truk was nil - unlike the the USA the IJA/IJN had neither the resources nor the personnel to be able to construct such facilities rapidly. (1) Certainly Truk will be hit eventually, but every time a ship or aircraft is fueled the net supply is reduced, making every flight, every sailing a matter of concern.
(1) accounts of the construction equipment found when the Marines took the airfield on Guadalcanal (later Henderson Field) showed it is limited in number and bulldozers and such were well below US standards in capability.
(1) accounts of the construction equipment found when the Marines took the airfield on Guadalcanal (later Henderson Field) showed it is limited in number and bulldozers and such were well below US standards in capability.
0800 Hours, 4 November 1942, Trincomalee, Ceylon – As far as exercises go, the Eastern Fleet’s amphibious training in early November 1942 was fairly simple with no live fire events and no opposition force. The primary goal was to test basic muscle movements and test the modifications to several of the fleet’s warships.
With the old battleship HMS Centurion and the old light cruisers HMS Caradoc and HMS Ceres loitering offshore in their role as anti-aircraft escorts, the converted American destroyers USS Dent and USS Waters and the seaplane carrier/commando carrier HMS Albatross launched LCVPs with troops from No. 5 Commando and Riain’s Raiders headed for the beach. Overhead, two OS2U Kingfishers from HMS Albatross orbited, their observers in communication with the old Greek cruiser Georgios Averof and HMS Centurion, testing communications for gunfire support. The exercises in their most basic form would go on for the next two days. The next step would be to add the fleet’s assault transports and the troops of the 29th Infantry Brigade.
With the old battleship HMS Centurion and the old light cruisers HMS Caradoc and HMS Ceres loitering offshore in their role as anti-aircraft escorts, the converted American destroyers USS Dent and USS Waters and the seaplane carrier/commando carrier HMS Albatross launched LCVPs with troops from No. 5 Commando and Riain’s Raiders headed for the beach. Overhead, two OS2U Kingfishers from HMS Albatross orbited, their observers in communication with the old Greek cruiser Georgios Averof and HMS Centurion, testing communications for gunfire support. The exercises in their most basic form would go on for the next two days. The next step would be to add the fleet’s assault transports and the troops of the 29th Infantry Brigade.
Truk is a bridge too far at this point. Distance is too far in terms of supporting the fleet and their is too much risk of detection.
0800 Hours, 4 November 1942, Truk Lagoon, Caroline Islands – The damaged battleship Haruna and the heavy cruiser Atago and their escorts safely arrived at Truk for additional repairs before returning to Japan for their visits to the drydock. The assembling of major units of the Combined Fleet at Truk had not gone unnoticed to traffic analysts in Hawaii and the stations in the South Pacific. By now the intelligence teams also knew what units were heading back to Empire Waters for repairs following recent actions around Guadalcanal. While Truk was too distant for the Pacific Fleet’s carriers, Rear Admiral Robert English’s team at COMSUBPAC was attempting to vector as many submarines as possible on to the suspected transit routes of the Japanese ships.
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Sorry, it's testing basic tactics and procedures to use as building blocks for more complex tactics and procedures (i.e. muscle movements).
Um, I know the Japanese have been hurt more ITTL, but I'm not aware of them loosing more tankers and oilers specifically? Have you possibly gotten some details mixed up from Keynes Cruisers and/or one of the other Pacific War timelines?
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