Could Japan have won at Midway? And if so, what would change?
- Thread starter sampleswift
- Start date
You could add a couple days to convoy trips from the West Coast. But tough for Japan to do much than that.
Yup. And that's exactly what *would* happen in this scenario.
Though, truth to tell, most of those garrisons were pretty damned formidable already . . .
By September, there were 30,000 Allied troops on the island, including the best division in the American army, the Americal. Numerous air squadrons. Horrific coral reefs making only a small handful of beaches feasible for landings.
The Japanese would have to bring a force equivalent to what they brought to the Philippines to have even a prayerof taking it. Only this time, they'd be doing it halfway around the world, not two hundred miles off Formosa. And heaven only knows how they'd sustain air cover or supply the forces for more than a week.
The skippers were 'docile' due to USN doctrine of the day - yes it got rapidly better - much better - but in mid 42 there was still far to go before it became the 'Chad' submarine force of lore.
nbcman
Donor
By the time the Japanese could try to advance in the south Pacific area, there were plenty of forces there or heading there to stop them cold. Carl Schwamberger made a detailed summary of the units that were in or enroute to the south Pacific in another Midway thread:
And even if somehow the IJN miraculously takes all of the objectives of Op FS and takes Fiji it is still 2600 kms from Fiji to Wellington. Convoys would only have to sail further south to avoid any Japanese air attacks from Fiji - assuming the Japanese can find convoys in the wide open Pacific expanses. There will be no 'isolation' of NZ and Australia, period even with incredibly lucky Japanese performance.
EDIT: And if the response is that you were not intending for the Japanese to advance beyond the Solomon Islands, all of those US bases that were being built in the summer of 1942 would be able to provide ample air coverage to the US forces that would contest the Japanese aircraft as they did IOTL after Op Watchtower. The Japanese land based - and CV based aircraft would be attritted away just as OTL.
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Actually the Japanese pilot corps wasn't as badly damaged at Midway as some imagine. Of 480 aircrew, 370 survived, and 11 of the fatalities were cruiser i.e. floatplane personnel. (see Shattered Sword for details)
The Japanese problem was that their Naval pilot training program was almost unimaginably brutal. Until they started suffering serious losses the IJN training course had a 1% pass rate on the WRITTEN test of applicants, many of those were then disqualified in the physical testing portion of the selection process. They then had to endure a 10 month training course that included ongoing beatings, including caning (Saburo Sakai, a top IJN ace, recounted being struck, on just one occasion, 40 times by a heavy stake, just because an instructor thought he needed it). As part of the training they had to be able to swim 50 meters UNDERWATER in under 30 seconds, the current world record for the 50 meter freestyle, by an Olympic swimmer, using the newest training techniques and swimsuit, is 20.9 seconds.
Sato's training class started with 70 men, 25 were around at the end. Then, and only then, were they allowed to even touch an aircraft, with flight training taking an additional six months. Sato doesn't mention the washout rate in flight training, but even if it was only 20% that means that every class spend a year and a half to produce 20 pilots, or about 240 a year.
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That's a good list. I'll have to bookmark this.
I think the only force on Earth during the war that could have taken New Cal, Fiji, or Samoa as they were garrisoned and fortified by late summer 1942 was . . . the United States Navy.
In 1944.
Coulsdon Eagle
Monthly Donor
IIRC the same source stated that the real loss was in the highly-trained deck crew, most of whom were immolated in the hangar explosions, or went down with their ships.
Which wouldn't even have been enough to cover their pilot losses for October of 1942!
The pinniped requires a POD so early it would probably butterfly away the rise of the Nazis. The invasion of Oahu does not require POD early enough to butterfly away Japanese fascism. They're both cliches often used in poorly researched timelines, but one requires a POD so far back as to render the war unrecognizable, while the other still allows for a recognizable form, even though the POD has to be earlier (and have more butterflies) than the newbie imagines.
What I find more annoying is the misconception that without Pearl Harbor the USA would just stay neutral forever. No.
nbcman
Donor
There's a decent writeup on the pilot training on this page for the Pacific War Online Encyclopedia:
None of the pilots that took part in the PH attack had less than 600 hours flight time and some of the flight leaders had over 1500 hours. Pre-PH, officers had about 400 hours of flight time and enlisted had about 250 hours by the end of flight training By 1944, Japanese Navy pilots graduated with 40 hours of training.
Actually landing forces on and taking Oahu would have required the Japanese to not only completely abandon the Lunge South, but to have diverted much of their ship-building capacity to the construction of merchant hulls and tankers. They couldn't buy off the shelf from foreign yards, they lacked the hard currency, unlike today the Yen was not an accepted currency for international trade. The Japanese economy also didn't produce enough material or export income to support a major civilian ship AND warship construction program. That means, at a minimum, that the Shokaku class, and likely the Yamato Class are never produced. While the loss of the Yamatos would actually be a net positive, without the Shoakau and Zuikaku the Japanese plan for Pearl Harbor falls flat,
Just attempting to take Oahu would have required roughly double the personnel that the IJA devoted to the entire Southern Resource Area. It would also require the Japanese to conduct an opposed, heavily opposed at that, landing 3,700 miles from Japan and 2,500 miles from their nearest basing in the Marshalls. Logistically, I am unsure if any country, including the United State in 1945 could have managed that. Even Leyte was only 1,200 miles from the Marianas, and the Marianas were around 1,400 from the Marshalls. The Japanese didn't conduct landing of any scale that were more than a few hundred miles from a major land base, ever. Closest you get is Wake, and that is only 700 miles from Kwajalein, and was, even on the December 23rd landing, was attempted by less than a brigade of landing troops.
SeeLowe is more infamous, but trying it with Palm Trees would wind up the same way.
Compare that to the Plan and US equivalent - many 10s of thousands of aircrew every year by 43
And the aircraft for them to crew