WI: Soviet Union loses the Battle of Khalkin Gol

[ObssesedNuker]

Sure, the Soviets were IOTL planning on doing something completely different from what the Japanese were doing.

The Kwangtung Army were seeking to destroy the enemy violating what they regarded as their frontier, as in accordance with directives they themselves had issued after the Lake Khasan ("destroy any enemy forces that violate the frontier). Fundamentally, what they wanted was identical to what the Soviets wanted. Their failure to allocate resources for their desired objective was their own failure.

Also the Japanese rail head was vastly closer to their border than the Soviets'.

Which makes the Japanese inability to support a force even 1/5th the size of the Soviets even more glaring, not less.

200 trucks is many and 100km is far for a single division operating on the border as a guard/tripwire force.

At this point, you are deliberately misconstruing the quote. It states flat out that 200 trucks was many and 100 km was far for the Japanese. Nowhere in there does it say "for a single division". Even then, if you actually read the quote you'll see that what the Japanese considered "many" is still less then what was actually required to support the 23rd division.

So Tokyo stopped things entirely after a single raid, firing the army commander and reigning in the entire army finally.

Except it wasn't the only raid. It was the latest incident in a series of raids and attacks that had been ongoing since September 2nd in response to the Soviet offensive as part of the larger battle which had been ongoing since May... all in defiance of Tokyo's orders.

The Soviets planned for months for complex military campaign,

Zhukov's initial proposal for the offensive was made on July 31st, the draft plan for the offensive submitted to the STAVKA on August 10th, the relevant orders issued to the 1st Army Group on the 17th, and the offensive commenced on the 20th. From conception to execution, the offensive took 21 days. Not remotely "months" (Stalin's General: The Life of Georgy Zhukov, Geoffrey Robets, Page 53-54).

Throttled does not mean withdraw, it means limit how much they are sent in the first place.

Again, something you have thus far provided no evidence that Tokyo managed to in anyway limit the forces the Kwangtung Army dispatched to Khalkhin Ghol. You have provided evidence they issued orders, but you have given no evidence that those orders were followed. What orders you have cited I have provided examples to show how they were not followed. Similarly, you've provided plenty of bland assertion that the Japanese could support more then they did, in defiance of not only academic but contemporary Japanese analysis, but not a whole lot of evidence

Kwantung listened to Tokyo in September when they stopped the fighting by fiat and ended up firing the commander of that army.

Except as I noted, that didn't end the fighting. Else why was there an attack on Soviet positions near Nomonhon on September 12th?

Beyond that they put a prohibition on air attacks on Soviet territory in June. The IJA listened.

Which is why, as I noted, Coox records further Japanese air attacks in July and August on Soviet territory. On August 21st, during the Soviet offensive, the Japanese even attempted to strike the same airfields they had in June (Page 686-687). Hell, the most intense air battles actually occurred near the end of the battle. On the morning of September 15th, for example, Japanese aircraft tried to strike at two Soviet airbases near Lake Biur [Coox, Page 883].

 

[David T]

If the Japanese won, it would be Nomonhan, not Khalkhin Gol!

 

[DaleCoz]

The elephant in the room on the 1939 border miniwar: The Japanese in the summer of 1939 thought they had a tacit alliance with Germany against the Soviets and that any war against the Soviets would be at least potentially a two-front war for the Soviets. When the Germans went after and got a non-aggression pact with the Soviets, that revolutionized the balance of power in the Far East. It meant that the Soviets could and did put a disproportionate amount of their logistics resources and their good divisions against the Japanese. They could afford to do so because there was no longer a threat to their west from the Germans.

It also meant that once the Japanese found out that the Nazi/Soviet non-aggression pact was coming, the Japanese home government desperately wanted to keep the mini-war from getting bigger. Japan was not capable of fighting the Soviets alone, especially with so much of their army tied down in China. The Nazi/Soviet non-aggression pact meant that suddenly the Japanese would be fighting alone if they kept pursuing the battle.

So the key to the Nomanhon battles was with the Germans. If they went for the non-aggression pact with the Soviets, a Japanese defeat of some sort was pretty close to inevitable. And they pretty much had to go for the non-aggression pact once the British and French agreed to guarantee Poland's borders. If the Germans were far more diplomatically clever than they actually were, they might have insisted that the Soviet/Japanese fighting be ended before the non-aggression pact went into affect, thus keeping an ally from getting it's butt kicked. They might have also responded to the British/French border guarantee by almost immediately doing a lightning grab of Danzig and the Czech area that the Poles seized in 1938 and daring the Wallies to declare war on them for seizing an undoubtedly German city and a bit of Czechoslovakia that Poland had grabbed a few months earlier.

Given a Nazi/Soviet pact, the one possibility for a stalemate--not a Japanese victory: If the Japanese had much better forewarning of the size of the main Soviet strike coming early enough to do a counter-buildup. That would take a spy in place or much better recon and people in the Japanese military leadership willing to believe and act on the reports early and the Japanese home government being willing to commit leadership quickly enough. None of that seems particularly likely.

All that being said, giving a more experienced better quality Japanese division the lead for the battle would have undoubtedly made the Soviet task more difficult, resulted in heavier Soviet casualties and possibly fewer Japanese casualties. The Japanese were going to lose the territory that was in dispute. The only question was whether or not they would have the bulk of a division destroyed in addition to losing the territory. A more experienced, better led division might have been able to salvage more from the defeat.

 

[BobTheBarbarian]

@wiking , after a closer look through my materials (I haven't really debated much about this battle recently either and feel a bit rusty ), it seems you may have been on to something. According to page 71 of Ed Drea's "Soviet-Japanese Tactical Combat," a big part of why Komatsubara was caught off-guard by Zhukov was because the existing logistics immediately available to the 1st Army Group (2,600 trucks, including 1,000 fuel tankers) were inadequate to meet the needs of an attack the size of the one actually launched, estimated at 5,000 trucks. To bridge the gap, Zhukov was sent an additional 1,625 from European Russia, which proved "barely adequate" to do the job. The concentration of these together with his existing motor pool was seen as "incomprehensible" to the Japanese, but it demonstrated that the other parts of the Soviet Far East were either unwilling or unable to help Zhukov and STAVKA had to tap the main body of the Red Army to settle the issue at Khalkhin Gol.

Had the Japanese commitment to Nomonhan been much larger from the beginning, it appears that the corresponding supply burden on the Soviet side to counteract it might indeed have been borne entirely by trucks from European Russia, which would have progressively weakened Soviet capabilities there on the eve of the premeditated war against Finland. Such a thing would have been unacceptable to Stalin and the top leadership, putting a hard cap on the extent to which the Red Army could send additional support to the battlefront.

Furthermore, going through the 1st Army Group TO&E (http://www.armchairgeneral.com/rkkaww2/battles/khalkhin_gol/Khalkhin_cut1.pdf), for the climactic battle in August the Soviets only had 262 towed artillery pieces of 76 mm to 152 mm in caliber, a total recently boosted by the 76 guns of the 57th Rifle Division that arrived that month (the majority of the 1st Army Group's reinforcements were compiled in July, not August). Adding up the combined total from both the Japanese forces that were defeated at Khalkhin Gol (82 field guns plus 16 regimental guns that could double as field artillery) together with the relief force (350 to 400 field pieces and regimental guns depending on some specifics) and the Soviets are suddenly horribly outgunned, even if their ML-20s had a range advantage. Looking back on it, Coox's claim that this grouping was "fatally deficient" in artillery seems totally absurd, considering it alone had half again the firepower of Zhukov's entire force. What was he thinking?

The only decisive advantage the Red Army would still possess would be the number of tanks, and the Japanese reinforcement group would have had up to 200 anti-tank guns and 276 AT Rifles with them as well. If the 23rd Division and the two regiments from the 7th Division were alone enough to knock out nearly 400 Soviet tanks and armored cars, I don't think even the entire combined armored strength of the Trans-Baikal Military District would have been enough to defeat them had they been there from the start. Frankly, under the circumstances of a "maximum effort" from the Kwantung Army out of the gate it's looking more and more like Zhukov might not have been able to achieve anything like the victory he historically won within the framework of Soviet political and military planning at the time, even allowing for more leeway from Stalin; instead 1st Army Group might have been stalemated and bled white. I may have to retract my initial claim that Soviet victory was inevitable under most all circumstances - in a vacuum, yes, but realistically I'm not so sure.

 

[steamboy]

Wiking, i've got to ask, but looking at other threads and posts in the past, are you capable of crediting the Soviet military with anything or do oyu have to basically got "Well actually..." with anything they did and then poo-poo it (They only won due to numbers, weather, supply situations, Axis forces being weak not the Germans etc etc).

In this battle, they were able to out fight the Japanese on a strategic level. They built up quicker, moved faster and hit harder.

 

[ObssesedNuker]

Adding up the combined total from both the Japanese forces that were defeated at Khalkhin Gol (82 field guns plus 16 regimental guns that could double as field artillery) together with the relief force (350 to 400 field pieces and regimental guns depending on some specifics) and the Soviets are suddenly horribly outgunned, even if their ML-20s had a range advantage. Looking back on it, Coox's claim that this grouping was "fatally deficient" in artillery seems totally absurd, considering it alone had half again the firepower of Zhukov's entire force. What was he thinking?

Maybe he was factoring in the ability of the Japanese to actually supply their guns with shells, since otherwise their just oversized paperweights. As it was, at Khalkhin Ghol the Soviet batteries were able to fire more rounds in a minute then their Japanese equivalents could afford to expend in a week, according to the Japanese themselves.

 

[steamboy]

Also with those numbers, they would be great if they were all massed in one area if the Soviets were obliging enough to drive their tanks at the Japanese AT guns/artillery without support, infantry, their own artillery etc etc etc. This assumes complete retardation of the Soviets who will only drive in straight lines and throw themselves onto honourable japanese steel.

 

[Guaro]

a more political and strategic question regarding the situation of the IJA in China/Manciuria: in 1939( if i remember right ) the Japanese decided to go all out in China, so was it politically possible to diverte all the resources historically used in the south ( maybe strong arming the Military in south china and condemning the Nanjing massacre) to be diverted in the north against the soviets? like saying, the REDS are the bigger problem, we can go full yolo in China till we settle the situation in Siberia ? would have made a difference ?

 

[steamboy]

Military in south china and condemning the Nanjing massacre

Sadly this idea falls flat. This is Imperial Japan. They didn't appologise, ever. you've still got elements of the populace today who would rather snort powdered glass than appologise for their countries actions in WW2. So asking Imperial japan in the 20s, 30s or 40's to appologise for something they did is simply not going to happen. Its a Military that has a governmental wing attached to it, and it was a military and leadership that went increasingly nuts as the years wore on.

 

[Redbeard]

There's a mild terrain difference between Finland and the Far east/Manchuko border areas. One was a snowy frozen hell of heavy woods etc, the areas they would be fighting initially would be open rolling grasslands and hills interspersed with the odd bit of woodland and river beds. Also its open as all hell. The War in Finland was fought over a very narrow frontage and this made it incredibly easy to defend. here you've not got a narrow bit of terrain to funnel someone into.

The Winter War indeed mainly was in very difficult terrain and quite different from that of Kalkhin Gol but the Winter War wasn't fought over a particularly narrow front. Some of the most spectacular encounters were fought in the wide areas north of the Ladoga and where the mobile Finnish ski troops had a good chance to penetrate into the rather thin Soviet lines.

The front between the Baltic and the Laduga was quite narrow and held by the Finnish in the so-called Mannerheim Line. From what I recall the Red Army plan was to bypass the Mannerheim Line by going through the wide areas north of the Ladoga. In theory a good plan when you have a relatively mechanised force vs. an enemy numerically very inferior and hardly mechanised at all. But as it showed a very bad plan when the opponent never the less understood to utilise the terrain to take the initiative. In numbers (men, tanks, guns, planes etc.) the Red Army in the Winter War had a much larger advantage than the Red Army at Kalkhin Gol.

In spite of all the successes of the Finns in these clashes the war ended when the Soviets finally got their act together and crushed the Mannerheim line with overwhelming firepower and numbers.

Going to Kalkhin Gol the Red Army IMHO has some extra advantages due to its superior mechanisation (compared to the Japanese Army) and the terrain "asking for tanks", but that still by no way is a guarantee against failure.

A few PoDs to considder:
- Another and much less able Soviet commander - not difficult to find in the post purges Red Army
- Political interference - even with a good commander you can fail if politicians interfere too much. Like in where and when the battle is to be fought
- The Japanese actually guess what is going to happen and allocate more ressources
- The Soviets overestimate their own strength and underestimate that of the Japanese
- Someone on the Japanese side see that it would be hopeless to fight in continious lines and instead deploy in hedgehog positions placed in chequerboard formation.
- Shit happens

 

[Deleted member 1487]

In this battle, they were able to out fight the Japanese on a strategic level. They built up quicker, moved faster and hit harder.

Sure, they were willing to bring a gun to the knife fight. That wasn't a mark of superior strategy so much as it was a political choice to go all out knowing that Tokyo did not want war at all cost. Somewhat like the Germans being willing to sneak attack the USSR in 1941. One side went all other, the other was limited abilities to resist.

Also with those numbers, they would be great if they were all massed in one area if the Soviets were obliging enough to drive their tanks at the Japanese AT guns/artillery without support, infantry, their own artillery etc etc etc. This assumes complete retardation of the Soviets who will only drive in straight lines and throw themselves onto honourable japanese steel.

1941-42? Finland? In fact part of the Khalkhin Gol fighting? The Soviets improved in time, but they did make mistakes like that historically.

 

[BobTheBarbarian]

Maybe he was factoring in the ability of the Japanese to actually supply their guns with shells, since otherwise their just oversized paperweights. As it was, at Khalkhin Ghol the Soviet batteries were able to fire more rounds in a minute then their Japanese equivalents could afford to expend in a week, according to the Japanese themselves.

I don't think they ever said that, but the justification could be that the Soviets were much better supplied given they fired three times the volume of shells the Japanese did for the duration of the battle. It could also be the author blithely glossing over the rest of the Japanese effort considering it was too little, too late, and was never committed to the battle at any point where it could have made a difference. I recall the analogy of a "poor man and his money," with Tokyo unwilling to "pay up" in the face of Soviet escalation.

On the other hand, even the basic Japanese ration of 100 shells per gun per day for 75mm pieces and 50 for the 150mm howitzers, with that number of guns, probably would have tipped the balance back just by the sheer numbers; it also doesn't help the Soviets that half of their field pieces were the 76mm regimental guns and not the long F-22, which could match the Japanese Type 90s and exceed the Type 38 improved in range.

 

[Deleted member 1487]

The Kwangtung Army were seeking to destroy the enemy violating what they regarded as their frontier, as in accordance with directives they themselves had issued after the Lake Khasan ("destroy any enemy forces that violate the frontier). Fundamentally, what they wanted was identical to what the Soviets wanted. Their failure to allocate resources for their desired objective was their own failure.

The link says they had permission to 'expel the invaders' not specifically destroy them or penetrate into the USSR to achieve that. If we go by your formulation, they weren't trying to destroy Soviet forces on their declared side of the border, just those that violated the border. The Soviets sent and entire army group by order of Moscow to destroy Japanese units on their side of the border, Kwangtung army had it's pre-existing border guard division maintain the border and keep out Soviet invaders. Very different things, as Tokyo never sent and army group with a commander from the capital and major reinforcements to destroy a Japanese division, while the preexisting Japanese unit in the area was tasked by the local command with defending the border.

Which makes the Japanese inability to support a force even 1/5th the size of the Soviets even more glaring, not less.

How so? They didn't think they needed enough force or supplies to fight an entire Soviet army group. They had enough supply to fight a border skirmish.

At this point, you are deliberately misconstruing the quote. It states flat out that 200 trucks was many and 100 km was far for the Japanese. Nowhere in there does it say "for a single division". Even then, if you actually read the quote you'll see that what the Japanese considered "many" is still less then what was actually required to support the 23rd division.

That quote is extraordinarily vague. Many for what and for for what? Sure the Japanese might have considered that such, but in context it seems to be referring to the support of a border division fighting a border clash. They were traveling further and using more trucks in China to invade, which suggests more that the quote is contextual for the situation in Manchuria for border divisions rather than offensive combat divisions of front line quality. And again what was required to support the 23rd division was fine for a border skirmish, it was not near enough to support a fight against an entire Soviet Army Group, which the Japanese apparently did not realize they were facing. Again this all comes back to the Japanese not understanding the threat they were facing or the nature of the conflict, so not sending enough forces in time or providing enough supply because they thought what they had was adequate to maintain the border.

Except it wasn't the only raid. It was the latest incident in a series of raids and attacks that had been ongoing since September 2nd in response to the Soviet offensive as part of the larger battle which had been ongoing since May... all in defiance of Tokyo's orders.

You said yourself it was a raid. It being one more of a series of clashes doesn't change the reality of it's size, which caused to Tokyo finally put it's foot down and sack Kwangtung army's commander for disobeying orders and call off all the offensive actions he ordered. So the Japanese never really clapped back on the intended level Kwangtung army planned.

Zhukov's initial proposal for the offensive was made on July 31st, the draft plan for the offensive submitted to the STAVKA on August 10th, the relevant orders issued to the 1st Army Group on the 17th, and the offensive commenced on the 20th. From conception to execution, the offensive took 21 days. Not remotely "months" (Stalin's General: The Life of Georgy Zhukov, Geoffrey Robets, Page 53-54).

Zhukov arrived on June 5th with reinforcements:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battles_of_Khalkhin_Gol#June:_Escalation

The Soviets dispatched a new corps commander, Comcor Georgy Zhukov, who arrived on 5 June and brought more motorized and armored forces (I Army Group) to the combat zone.[26] Accompanying Zhukov was Comcor Yakov Smushkevich with his aviation unit. J. Lkhagvasuren, Corps Commissar of the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Army, was appointed Zhukov's deputy.

His offensive plan took 21 days from proposal to start, but all the ground work was laid from the moment of his arrival to the point of even being able to make a proposal. The wheels were in motion before the final attack plan and approval was given. At THAT point then it took 21 days, but forces began massing in early June when they arrived with Zhukov.

Again, something you have thus far provided no evidence that Tokyo managed to in anyway limit the forces the Kwangtung Army dispatched to Khalkhin Ghol. You have provided evidence they issued orders, but you have given no evidence that those orders were followed. What orders you have cited I have provided examples to show how they were not followed. Similarly, you've provided plenty of bland assertion that the Japanese could support more then they did, in defiance of not only academic but contemporary Japanese analysis, but not a whole lot of evidence

Again when Tokyo fired the commander of the Kwangtung army is the prime example, but also the orders not to attack Soviet airbases:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battles_of_Khalkhin_Gol#June:_Escalation

On 27 June, the Japanese Army Air Force's 2nd Air Brigade struck the Soviet air base at Tamsak-Bulak in Mongolia. The Japanese won this engagement, but the strike had been ordered by the Kwantung Army without getting permission from Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) headquarters in Tokyo. In an effort to prevent the incident from escalating,[27] Tokyo promptly ordered the JAAF not to conduct any more air strikes against Soviet airbases.[28]

To that point Kwangtung had inordinate freedom, but they chose not to dispatch forces, not understanding what the Soviets had actually brought. So they left 23rd Division largely to fight on it's own until too late.

What Tokyo did mostly was not reinforce Kwangtung army with any other forces that they could have used to reinforce the 23rd Division, so for Kwangtung to have reinforced 23rd it would have had to strip units out all over Manchuria to help them, which it actually did do in September, but was stopped in the middle of it's build up.

Except as I noted, that didn't end the fighting. Else why was there an attack on Soviet positions near Nomonhon on September 12th?

Kwangtung defiance, which prompted the sacking of the commander and Tokyo to take a much tighter rein on the army so it didn't start a war.

Which is why, as I noted, Coox records further Japanese air attacks in July and August on Soviet territory. On August 21st, during the Soviet offensive, the Japanese even attempted to strike the same airfields they had in June (Page 686-687). Hell, the most intense air battles actually occurred near the end of the battle. On the morning of September 15th, for example, Japanese aircraft tried to strike at two Soviet airbases near Lake Biur [Coox, Page 883].

Attacks on Soviet territory...but the prohibition was attacks on Soviet airbases. I don't have Coox's book with me, so I cannot cross reference the cite for now. You say attempted, why did it not work?

 

[steamboy]

Sure, they were willing to bring a gun to the knife fight. That wasn't a mark of superior strategy so much as it was a political choice to go all out knowing that Tokyo did not want war at all cost. Somewhat like the Germans being willing to sneak attack the USSR in 1941. One side went all other, the other was limited abilities to resist.
.

So...that's like..unsportsmanlike? Sorry but since when was war ever sporting or fair? The Japanese went in provoking a battle and the Soviets reacted correctly by bringing overwhelming force. If you have an advantage you don't squander it or hold forces back to be sportsmanlike. If you have an advantage you make mercyless use of it. And yet again, you poo-poo what the Soviet army did becuase Soviet army I guess. Next you'll say Bagatron was unfair because the Soviets had numbers on their side or something.

 

[Deleted member 1487]

A few PoDs to considder:
- Another and much less able Soviet commander - not difficult to find in the post purges Red Army

This is actually kind of tough for the situation in the Far East, as the forces there largely escaped the purge, while Stalin sent his best commander he could spare to organize the thing. Giorgy Shtern also apparently had a lot of influence on the fighting, and he was a local commander who had avoided the purges to that point (until 1941) and was very good.

- Political interference - even with a good commander you can fail if politicians interfere too much. Like in where and when the battle is to be fought

Part of the benefit of being in the Far East is being far away from Moscow so that you don't have to worry about interference nearly as much, which is why Stalin sent his best man who he felt he could trust to handle things without oversight.

- The Japanese actually guess what is going to happen and allocate more ressources

This is IMHO the best option; have Kwangtung send in the cavalry (metaphorically speaking) in July or early August as a result of better intel would make a huge difference.

- The Soviets overestimate their own strength and underestimate that of the Japanese

Hard to see that happening, they got a chance to see the Japanese strength in the July offensive.

- Someone on the Japanese side see that it would be hopeless to fight in continious lines and instead deploy in hedgehog positions placed in chequerboard formation.

This dovetails with the earlier point and would require the Japanese to understand what is actually going on and what they're facing...which would require reinforcements.

- Shit happens

Ha, probably the underestimated POD of all time.

 

[Deleted member 1487]

So...that's like..unsportsmanlike? Sorry but since when was war ever sporting or fair? The Japanese went in provoking a battle and the Soviets reacted correctly by bringing overwhelming force. If you have an advantage you don't squander it or hold forces back to be sportsmanlike. If you have an advantage you make mercyless use of it. And yet again, you poo-poo what the Soviet army did becuase Soviet army I guess. Next you'll say Bagatron was unfair because the Soviets had numbers on their side or something.

Kind of sounds like you're deliberately misconstruing my point. Nowhere did I say it was 'unsportsmanlike'. I simply said the Soviets had the political freedom and outside help to go all out, the Japanese forces were left on their own and restrained by their political leaders while also not having the right intel on the threat massing against them.
Remember this fight started in May due to the Soviets (really their Mongolian allies) violating the Japanese Manchurian border and continuing to escalate thereafter, beyond what the Japanese were up to. As of early June Moscow as dispatching an entire army group to force the issue, while the Japanese were content with guarding their side of the border. Fairness has nothing to do with what happened, I don't know why you're bitching about a point I'm not making. One side felt free to escalate to the max, the other did not as it was already engaged in a major war, while also not understanding what the Soviets were willing and preparing to do to make a point. I guess kudos to the Soviets for ruthlessly being willing to leverage their military advantage to get a political outcome they wanted (non-aggression pact...which of course they violated when it was in their interest).

 

[BobTheBarbarian]

Attacks on Soviet territory...but the prohibition was attacks on Soviet airbases. I don't have Coox's book with me, so I cannot cross reference the cite for now. You say attempted, why did it not work?

"Khalkhin Gol: War in the Air" (in Russian) by Vyacheslav Kondrat'ev provides a comprehensive overview of the VVS' experience from the Russian perspective. The first IJAAF raid on Soviet airbases took place on the 27th of June and led to the destruction of 20 aircraft in exchange for four on the Japanese side. After this mission, there were no further attacks from either the Soviets or the Japanese on the other's airfields until the Soviets attacked the Japanese 24th Sentai's (Squadron's) base on July 29th, destroying 6 planes and damaging five more, having additionally set fire to two fuel trucks near the runway. In the intervening time between these two actions the respective combatants kept the action limited to the contested ground, though both the Soviets and Japanese launched bombing missions on the other's ground troops.

On August 2nd the Soviets attacked Japanese airfields again, this time the that of the 15th Sentai; as before 6 planes were destroyed for no Soviet loss. When Zhukov launched his general offensive on August 20th the Red Air Force yet again went after the Japanese on their own territory, shooting up the 64th Sentai's landing strip and claiming 6 kills with 9 more IJAAF planes damaged. Finally, after much screaming from the Kwantung Army a special permission from Tokyo was finally obtained to retaliate on the Soviet airfields, and on August 21 the Japanese went after Tamsag-Bulag but were discovered en route, consequently the air was already thick with Soviet fighters when the Japanese raiders arrived; the Soviets admitted to 12 planes destroyed in the air and on the ground while the Japanese reported six losses. After this, the Japanese directed their bombers to support their ground troops, but it wasn't enough to stop Zhukov's offensive. The third and fourth Japanese attacks on the Soviet airfields, a sort of 'parting gift' before the ceasefire on September 16th, took place on the 14th and 15th of that month, respectively. The attack on the 14th was small and resulted in no losses to either side, but the one on the 15th was much larger and initially achieved surprise. The Soviets quickly managed to recover, and by the end of it 9 Japanese fighters and a bomber were lost to 6 Soviet fighters.

By Kondrat'ev's account, the IJAAF throughout the campaign was hamstrung by Tokyo and never attacked the Soviets' bases except at the beginning and very end of the fighting, whereas the VVS, not subject to such limitations, were able to strafe the Japanese whenever they felt able to do so.

 

[Deleted member 1487]

So what about the premise then? Say Kwangtung reacts in time and sends enough reinforcements in July/early August to smash or at least stalemate Zhukov's August offensive without prohibitive Japanese losses. How does Moscow react to the result?

 

[gaijin]

So what about the premise then? Say Kwangtung reacts in time and sends enough reinforcements in July/early August to smash or at least stalemate Zhukov's August offensive without prohibitive Japanese losses. How does Moscow react to the result?

You really seem to be ignoring the matter of logistics here. Whatever the Japanese do, the Soviets can mirror and exceed. In other words, if the Japanese bring in an extra division, the Soviets match this to maintain the same general balance of forces. If the Japanese bring in three divisions, they are, well fucked really, because they don't have any way to supply them properly.

To use a technical term, the Soviets have escalation dominance here. The reason they possess escalation dominance has very little to do with the Japanese "holding back", but a lot with the Japanese "not being able to". Modern wars aren't won by things like grit, buckling down, elan, cran, or bushido (like the Japanese thought). They are won by three things: logistics, logistics and logistics.

This is not a fight the Japanese are going to win. The IJA is too lightly equipped, too slow, and lacks proper tactics, strategy and doctrine.

Just because the Soviets got their asses handed to them by the Heer in 41 and 42 doesn't mean the Japanese can do something remotely similar. The IJA is not the Wehrmacht. The IJA resembles the Italian army more than anything. The Soviet army of 1938 is of course not the finely tuned machine it was in 1945, then again it doesn't have to be. All it needs to be is better than the IJA in 1938. In the battlefield chosen by the Soviets this was very much the case.

I'm going to agree with Steamboat here, you are extremely reliable in the sense that you consistently underestimate the Soviets and overestimate anyone facing them (especially if it are the beloved boys in Feldgrau).

 

[Deleted member 1487]

You really seem to have trouble with the concept of logistics here. Whatever the Japanese do, the Soviets can mirror and exceed. In other words, if the Japanese bring in an extra division, the Soviets match this to maintain the same general balance of forces. If the Japanese bring in three divisions, they are, well fucked really, because they don't have any way to supply them properly.

To use a technical term, the Soviets have escalation dominance here. The reason they possess escalation dominance has very little to do with the Japanese "holding back", but a lot with the Japanese "not being able to". Modern wars aren't won by things like grit, buckling down, elan, cran, or bushido (like the Japanese thought). They are won by three things: logistics, logistics and logistics.

This is not a fight the Japanese are going to win. The IJA is too lightly equipped, too slow, and lacks proper tactics, strategy and doctrine.

Just because the Soviets got their asses handed to them by the Heer in 41 and 42 doesn't mean the Japanese can do something remotely similar. The IJA is not the Wehrmacht. The IJA resembles the Italian army more than anything.

I'm going to agree with Steamboat here, you are extremely in the sense that you consistently underestimate the Soviets and overestimate anyone facing them (especially if it are the beloved boys in Feldgrau).

Have you not been paying attention to any of the discussion to this point? The Soviets were maxed out on their logistic ability and were barely able to keep pace by nearly doubling their truck capacity from European Russia on the eve of Poland and Finland. If anything given your post history, you seem to have a blind spot for Soviet weaknesses. Adding one single extra division for the Soviets would mean a massive commitment of additional trucks, which might well have been beyond their capabilities as Bob pointed out; they were barely able to keep their existing forces supplied with their huge commitment of trucks. And again you're completely ignoring that the Japanese really didn't commit forces to the fight to win it, so the commitment of say the 7th division in toto by early August along with addition trucks to support them would mean the doubling of Japanese combat power in terms of artillery an AT assets, which means a hell of a lot more than 'bushido'. Given their OTL tactics they were able to mash up the best Soviet forces quite well despite being outnumbered 5:1 in overall manpower, not to mention much more in terms of aircraft and tanks. So doubling or tripling Japanese boots on the ground in the combat zone tips the balance against the Soviets pretty heavily, as even a fraction of the 7th division committed IOTL stopping Soviet forces when they contacted them.

Your capabilities to project on to others your own blind spots are remarkable; you've ignored the actual discussion on this thread, which included sources and numbers from Bob, who has researched this topic more than anyone here, including looking into Russian language sources, to just make some general whinging post about how I'm not fair to the Soviets. Meanwhile you've completely ignored the reality and context of what happened to engage in rank Soviet fanboi-ism.

Clearly the Japanese had major problems with their military...but so did the Soviets. What happened at Khalkhin Gol wasn't a testament to their endless abilities at logistics, operational/tactical skill, or doctrine, it was largely numbers and maxing out their local abilities to conduct operations:

According to page 71 of Ed Drea's "Soviet-Japanese Tactical Combat," a big part of why Komatsubara was caught off-guard by Zhukov was because the existing logistics immediately available to the 1st Army Group (2,600 trucks, including 1,000 fuel tankers) were inadequate to meet the needs of an attack the size of the one actually launched, estimated at 5,000 trucks. To bridge the gap, Zhukov was sent an additional 1,625 from European Russia, which proved "barely adequate" to do the job. The concentration of these together with his existing motor pool was seen as "incomprehensible" to the Japanese, but it demonstrated that the other parts of the Soviet Far East were either unwilling or unable to help Zhukov and STAVKA had to tap the main body of the Red Army to settle the issue at Khalkhin Gol.

Had the Japanese commitment to Nomonhan been much larger from the beginning, it appears that the corresponding supply burden on the Soviet side to counteract it might indeed have been borne entirely by trucks from European Russia, which would have progressively weakened Soviet capabilities there on the eve of the premeditated war against Finland. Such a thing would have been unacceptable to Stalin and the top leadership, putting a hard cap on the extent to which the Red Army could send additional support to the battlefront.

Furthermore, going through the 1st Army Group TO&E (http://www.armchairgeneral.com/rkkaww2/battles/khalkhin_gol/Khalkhin_cut1.pdf), for the climactic battle in August the Soviets only had 262 towed artillery pieces of 76 mm to 152 mm in caliber, a total recently boosted by the 76 guns of the 57th Rifle Division that arrived that month (the majority of the 1st Army Group's reinforcements were compiled in July, not August). Adding up the combined total from both the Japanese forces that were defeated at Khalkhin Gol (82 field guns plus 16 regimental guns that could double as field artillery) together with the relief force (350 to 400 field pieces and regimental guns depending on some specifics) and the Soviets are suddenly horribly outgunned, even if their ML-20s had a range advantage. Looking back on it, Coox's claim that this grouping was "fatally deficient" in artillery seems totally absurd, considering it alone had half again the firepower of Zhukov's entire force. What was he thinking?

The only decisive advantage the Red Army would still possess would be the number of tanks, and the Japanese reinforcement group would have had up to 200 anti-tank guns and 276 AT Rifles with them as well. If the 23rd Division and the two regiments from the 7th Division were alone enough to knock out nearly 400 Soviet tanks and armored cars, I don't think even the entire combined armored strength of the Trans-Baikal Military District would have been enough to defeat them had they been there from the start. Frankly, under the circumstances of a "maximum effort" from the Kwantung Army out of the gate it's looking more and more like Zhukov might not have been able to achieve anything like the victory he historically won within the framework of Soviet political and military planning at the time, even allowing for more leeway from Stalin; instead 1st Army Group might have been stalemated and bled white. I may have to retract my initial claim that Soviet victory was inevitable under most all circumstances - in a vacuum, yes, but realistically I'm not so sure.