Remember the Texas! The United States in World War II (an alternate history)

So the bottom line is that the PacFleet ALWAYS has a carrier at Pearl (or on the West Coast) since part of her escort force has to be used for patrolling of the Hawaiian Defense Zone (at least three ships, maybe four if Lahania Roads is also being patrolled). Any shipping to Australia or even Hawaii is either unprotected or uses up another part of a carrier Task Force escort screen.

Not saying that it can't work that way. Author's fiat 100% get it. and support it Just want to be sure I'm on the same page
and Admiral King is going to be pointing that out in his own diplomatic (chuckle) way

although in theory, in the Fall of 1941, the Pacific is still at peace. Usually one of the CVs is on the West Coast (refit or training airgroups), so their DDs are available for other missions. The USN is indeed overstretched however.

Although the Coast Guard cutter at Pearl Harbor, along the 4 remaining DMS that stayed at Pearl are also available to help with local Hawaiian water patrols
 
Thinking about destroyers, it looks like Fletchers laid down in August '41 (3 months before full wartime acceleration) commissioned in about 10-12 months from being laid down, while ships from March '41 took about 14-16 months. With that moved up 6 months, the Fletcher spam pipeline may end up with the ships laid down in March '41 available more like 11-12 months, and thus many, many more destroyers for the fleet coming online in January '41...just in time for service post-Pearl harbor. If necessary, they can work up covering Atlantic convoy runs while experienced ships get pivoted back to the Pacific (this is surely "Germany first" because the latest and greatest destroyers are on Atlantic convoy runs, of course).

It seems like similar math could apply to the Essexes which were laid down pre-war, like CV-16 and CV-17, compared to ships built after the war started on three-shift schedules like CV-10, 11, 18, and 12. Very small data set, but the ships started pre-war look like they were available to the fleet about 2-4 months slower than ships started after hostilities. Having Essexes available for, basically, Santa Cruz timing (October and December of '42 and March of '43 for CV-9, -16, and -17) seems like it has interesting implications, if less important on Day 1 than an extra set of three Fletchers per month available over OTL for the first several months of '42. After all, the easiest way to have more carriers available in late '42 is to lose fewer to subs and carrier battles in early '42...I suppose we'll soon see what @galveston bay has in store on that front.
 
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Gen Marshall forced thru that the first M3 Stuart tanks produced would goto the Philippines
At the outbreak of war, OTL, there were 2 Battalions of M 3 tanks, and a Battalion of SP 75mm guns on halftracks, brigaded with the 26th Phillipine Scouts (Cavalry) the best combat unit in the Phillipine army.
 
At the outbreak of war, OTL, there were 2 Battalions of M 3 tanks, and a Battalion of SP 75mm guns on halftracks, brigaded with the 26th Phillipine Scouts (Cavalry) the best combat unit in the Phillipine army.
The Philippine Commonwealth Army only had one FT-17 surplus from World War I which was received in early 1941. The Stuarts came later.
 

CalBear

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Thinking about destroyers, it looks like Fletchers laid down in August '41 (3 months before full wartime acceleration) commissioned in about 10-12 months from being laid down, while ships from March '41 took about 14-16 months. With that moved up 6 months, the Fletcher spam pipeline may end up with the ships laid down in March '41 available more like 11-12 months, and thus many, many more destroyers for the fleet coming online in January '41...just in time for service post-Pearl harbor. If necessary, they can work up covering Atlantic convoy runs while experienced ships get pivoted back to the Pacific (this is surely "Germany first" because the latest and greatest destroyers are on Atlantic convoy runs, of course).

It seems like similar math could apply to the Essexes which were laid down pre-war, like CV-16 and CV-17, compared to ships built after the war started on three-shift schedules like CV-10, 11, 18, and 12. Very small data set, but the ships started pre-war look like they were available to the fleet about 2-4 months slower than ships started after hostilities. Having Essexes available for, basically, Santa Cruz timing (October and December of '42 and March of '43 for CV-9, -16, and -17) seems like it has interesting implications, if less important on Day 1 than an extra set of three Fletchers per month available over OTL for the first several months of '42. After all, the easiest way to have more carriers available in late '42 is to lose fewer to subs and carrier battles in early '42...I suppose we'll soon see what @galveston bay has in store on that front.
One of the advantage that later ships in the same class always possess is that they basic, more less unavoidable flaws in the design and the best way to drill new personnel on systems are worked out over the first few hulls. This means less "aw shit!" moments in the yards when it is discovered that cable pass through predrilled hole are 1.8" too narrow or when it is realized that you HAVE to install the bulkhead for compartment 55-2-A before installing the bulkhead for 45-3-D unless you want to do some on site fabrication. Crews also now have "Dash 1s" that explain that the right forward lever MUST be engaged before the left rear lever. This is rarely the case with large ships because the total class construction might be 4-5 hulls, although it is more common in destroyers, DDE, and submarines, where 20+ ships of identical design are produced, often in a single yard (this was also why crewmen on Liberty or the later Victory ships could walk onto any other ship in the type and find the crew mess or the hatch leading to the heads).

You will also get a surge, as you noted, when you go from "fixed price" or maximum cost saving to "Does it look like we care about the money?" construction where paying a shipfitter triple OT doesn't even make anyone up the decision tree blink.
 

McPherson

Banned
Thinking about destroyers, it looks like Fletchers laid down in August '41 (3 months before full wartime acceleration) commissioned in about 10-12 months from being laid down, while ships from March '41 took about 14-16 months. With that moved up 6 months, the Fletcher spam pipeline may end up with the ships laid down in March '41 available more like 11-12 months, and thus many, many more destroyers for the fleet coming online in January '41...just in time for service post-Pearl harbor. If necessary, they can work up covering Atlantic convoy runs while experienced ships get pivoted back to the Pacific (this is surely "Germany first" because the latest and greatest destroyers are on Atlantic convoy runs, of course).

It seems like similar math could apply to the Essexes which were laid down pre-war, like CV-16 and CV-17, compared to ships built after the war started on three-shift schedules like CV-10, 11, 18, and 12. Very small data set, but the ships started pre-war look like they were available to the fleet about 2-4 months slower than ships started after hostilities. Having Essexes available for, basically, Santa Cruz timing (October and December of '42 and March of '43 for CV-9, -16, and -17) seems like it has interesting implications, if less important on Day 1 than an extra set of three Fletchers per month available over OTL for the first several months of '42. After all, the easiest way to have more carriers available in late '42 is to lose fewer to subs and carrier battles in early '42...I suppose we'll soon see what @galveston bay has in store on that front.
These questions are never asked...

a. How many trained welders are there available?
b. How many slipways exist?
c. How many pipefitters have been trained?
d. What is the electricity power-grid situation at the major shipyards?
e. Has William Cramp and Sons been taken over and the management been jailed and the shipyard rationalized/navalized?
f. Has the labor crisis in the shipbuilding industry in 1941 been fixed?
g. How is the engine crisis (heavy marine engines, especially steam plant, turbine sets, etc.) doing this time around? There was a reason that RSEs were bitterly accepted as part of the Liberty Ship Program.
h. How is the steel crisis doing?
i. Is there a chance that the Dive Bomber lesson from the Mediterranean can be learned this time to adopt "Midway" class type modular flight deck armor cells for the Essexes?
j. Are the idiotic Independences still a go?
k. How is the Navy reserve pilot training program doing?
l. How is HUSL doing?
j. Will the USN fix its aircraft flight line earlier?

Alternative...

One thing that makes the Fletcher unsuitable for convoy duty in the Atlantic is that it is too much destroyer for the convoy defense mission. I would rather stick experienced cadres in them and "fleet" them and train up (with the RCAN as tutors) new crews in the older destroyers that can be cycled back.

The older cans have shorter endurance and are more "broken in" for Atlantic convoy run operational purposes. I would think that as the fleet gets new hulls they will want them for the surface action groups.

Anyway, some of those hulls still need to be modified for a more ASW oriented mission. The tendency for the Sims and Gleaves and Porters was to be "anti-surface-ship". The Atlantic and the Mediterranean will; be AAA/ASW.
 
One of the advantage that later ships in the same class always possess is that they basic, more less unavoidable flaws in the design and the best way to drill new personnel on systems are worked out over the first few hulls. This means less "aw shit!" moments in the yards when it is discovered that cable pass through predrilled hole are 1.8" too narrow or when it is realized that you HAVE to install the bulkhead for compartment 55-2-A before installing the bulkhead for 45-3-D unless you want to do some on site fabrication. Crews also now have "Dash 1s" that explain that the right forward lever MUST be engaged before the left rear lever. This is rarely the case with large ships because the total class construction might be 4-5 hulls, although it is more common in destroyers, DDE, and submarines, where 20+ ships of identical design are produced, often in a single yard (this was also why crewmen on Liberty or the later Victory ships could walk onto any other ship in the type and find the crew mess or the hatch leading to the heads).

You will also get a surge, as you noted, when you go from "fixed price" or maximum cost saving to "Does it look like we care about the money?" construction where paying a shipfitter triple OT doesn't even make anyone up the decision tree blink.
Yeah, this is why I'm figuring that the advance over the OTL pre-war Fletchers (which spent the better part of 9 months being built in peace though under elevated pressure) compared to three-shifts, damn-the-money wartime might be less than the OTL acceleration seen with later units which were six to twelve units deep in the pipeline, but still faster than OTL--hence, January to February '42 but still with a lot of working up to do on milk run convoy escort, compared to July '42 in the same state, but not December '41. A 3-4 month advance for a 6 month advance in full-sprint construction, instead of the 4-6 seen with later units.
 

ShySusan

Gone Fishin'
How can America joining a few months ahead of schedule have any real effect on the course of the war?
It shaves maybe 2-3 months off the end of the war as the US has 6 extra months of the money flowing at ludicrous speed and 6 extra months to get it's personnel situation sorted out. Other than that though? It will depend on how the butterflies flap their wings.
 

Driftless

Donor
I'm guessing with the real Germany first effort and the U-Boat damages hitting early and often, plus having less demand to replace the losses of Pearl Harbor, there would be more pressure for quick convoy escorts and/or sub hunters than we saw in our history.

For example, the Treasury Class Cutters get pulled in sooner, or more are built?
 
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McPherson

Banned
One of the advantage that later ships in the same class always possess is that they basic, more less unavoidable flaws in the design and the best way to drill new personnel on systems are worked out over the first few hulls. This means less "aw shit!" moments in the yards when it is discovered that cable pass through predrilled hole are 1.8" too narrow or when it is realized that you HAVE to install the bulkhead for compartment 55-2-A before installing the bulkhead for 45-3-D unless you want to do some on site fabrication. Crews also now have "Dash 1s" that explain that the right forward lever MUST be engaged before the left rear lever. This is rarely the case with large ships because the total class construction might be 4-5 hulls, although it is more common in destroyers, DDE, and submarines, where 20+ ships of identical design are produced, often in a single yard (this was also why crewmen on Liberty or the later Victory ships could walk onto any other ship in the type and find the crew mess or the hatch leading to the heads).

You will also get a surge, as you noted, when you go from "fixed price" or maximum cost saving to "Does it look like we care about the money?" construction where paying a shipfitter triple OT doesn't even make anyone up the decision tree blink.
1. This cannot work with modularization. Either the "aw shucks" happens back at the sub-assembly site or in the drafts and plans shed. Then one has no choice, but to have somebody at the final assembly site who can figure out the "patch". This happened often especially with destroyer escorts, submarines and liberty ships. They did not have computers and good precise machine cutters back then for the joining edges precision. Jane Welder might be good, but she was still learning and sometimes she goofed.
2. Please see my previous list of questions? Those were historic American "bottlenecks" in 1941 that seriously impeded the USN and delayed by a full year the needed reinforcements. Then there is the workups and training of the New Navy> 180,000 veterans do not go very far. OJT means a year at sea AFTER the hulls are wet.

I mean the USN at Philippine Sea got there about as fast as it could. If one is going to speed up the process given by the Six month head start it has to come in the submarine force and a lot of ruffle shuffle there (Remember the power plant fiasco? That was a bigger problem than the torpedo crisis.)). The battle fleet cannot get there any faster due to human factors even if the hulls are bobbing around earlier.
 
These questions are never asked...
Well, I'm not writing the TL, and not having answers to questions like those beyond handwaving is part of why I'm probably never going to write a WWII naval TL in any detail though I enjoy reading them. :)

That said, the Fletchers I was looking at and debating the acceleration of are ships which were already laid down pre-POD (so they have slipways) and whose sister ships were notably accelerated after Pearl (so they found sufficient steel, electrical power, pipe-fitters, welders, and general labor eventually to go to three-shifts and such historically). They had engines for them too, historically.

I doubt Cramp and Sons and imprisoned if they weren't IOTL, though in a TL you were writing maybe they might be--you clearly have strong feelings on the topic.

I doubt the initial Essexes are altered much given the first several are already or are about to be on the slipways, and any changes in the first few months of the war are likely to come too late for the first several at least. I'm not really familiar with the armor scheme you cite, but maybe it'd be worked into any ships built later in the war? That, and the Independences, will have to wrestle with whether it's worth having an inferior carrier now instead of no carrier now and a better ship later.

Your thoughts on how best to use the Fletchers if they're available in February or so, but may still have bugs to work out are interesting. If all the ships need are trained crew experience cadre moved over as nearly complete companies replaced by training crews is good, but my concern was that I'm not sure the condition the initial Fletchers arrived at the fleet in, with regards to new toys like radar or fire control actually being in working shape regardless of the crew, and how that might reflect on ships rushed to the fleet here in similar condition.
 

CalBear

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Monthly Donor
It shaves maybe 2-3 months off the end of the war as the US has 6 extra months of the money flowing at ludicrous speed and 6 extra months to get it's personnel situation sorted out. Other than that though? It will depend on how the butterflies flap their wings.
War end when the Bomb is ready and the Soviets declare war and invade Manchuria. Really need both to happen (since the OP has indicated that Japan will become entangled in this scenario). Alternative is a 5-8 month ground war in the Home Islands.
 

McPherson

Banned
Your thoughts on how best to use the Fletchers if they're available in February or so, but may still have bugs to work out are interesting. If all the ships need are trained crew experience cadre moved over as nearly complete companies replaced by training crews is good, but my concern was that I'm not sure the condition the initial Fletchers arrived at the fleet in, with regards to new toys like radar or fire control actually being in working shape regardless of the crew, and how that might reflect on ships rushed to the fleet here in similar condition.
You actually need experienced crews, or crews with a larger mix of senior rates and bosuns and chiefs to recruits to this new construction, precisely because of the shipyard bolos and first in type issues that the Fletchers will encounter.

Cramp and Sons in the 1930s fell afoul of bad practices and some criminal activity. Think of them as like Brewster Aircraft, only with shipbuilding and the Philadelphia Mob instead of the New York labor racketeers involved.
 
War end when the Bomb is ready and the Soviets declare war and invade Manchuria. Really need both to happen (since the OP has indicated that Japan will become entangled in this scenario). Alternative is a 5-8 month ground war in the Home Islands.
War in Europe may end sooner than OTL though. There are already less sinkings by U-boats on the US coast, which will have butterflies.

And maybe the bomb being ready can be progressed a few months too, by throwing money at it sooner.
 

ShySusan

Gone Fishin'
War end when the Bomb is ready and the Soviets declare war and invade Manchuria. Really need both to happen (since the OP has indicated that Japan will become entangled in this scenario). Alternative is a 5-8 month ground war in the Home Islands.
True. And I don't think the POD would accelerate that much. Though I could see the war in Europe ending a bit sooner if the W. Allies are able to put more pressure on Germany ITTL
 

CalBear

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Monthly Donor
True. And I don't think the POD would accelerate that much. Though I could see the war in Europe ending a bit sooner if the W. Allies are able to put more pressure on Germany ITTL
That goes back to the issue of enough trained men and enough proper equipment. The CBO can't get underway, even against French targets/far West Germany (Bremen. Cologne) until the B-17E is available in multiple Group strength and won't be effective in destroying the Luftwaffe until A) the P-51 or extended range P-47 are available AND B) Doolittle or whoever takes his spot ATL, lets the fighters off the leash to go hunting and creates the hammer & anvil tactics that gutted the Luftwaffe. The U.S. needs to train a couple million more troops before even something like Torch can be attempted (assuming Churchill doesn't talk FDR into pissing away perfectly good troops on sideshow like Dieppe) and reasonable amounts of armor can be built along with shipping bottoms to transport them (God save the U.S. Army from being deployed in penny packets in the Western Desert under Montgomery).

It goes back to my personal hobby horse (apologies to the OP; if I'm riding this too hard, tell me and I'll stop) 180 days really isn't that much time, especially considering that a lot of what is needed (B-17E, B-24E, Liberty ships, draft intake, P-38, P-47, etc.) had already begun IOTL. It is possible that Overlord can go a month early (not sure about April), but there simply won't be enough amphibious lift or destroyed Luftwaffe aircraft by August of 1943 (probably the latest date that a landing on the French coast can be practically attempted before the weather over the Continent starts to seriously interfere with Allied airpower) to even consider it short of a desperate effort to save a collapsing USSR that is very likely to fail spectacularly with huge political consequences in the U.S.
 
Sustaining the Arctic convoys throughout summer 1942 could have a considerable impact on the eastern front. Plus reducing the crippling losses of shipping off the US coast helps hugely, as merchantman capacity controlled everything.

The trick is how to manage that, how to free up the naval forces needed to manage the Arctic and Med convoys. Avoiding Madagascar would certainly help. Plus you could argue that air cover for Harpoon/Vigorous would allow Kentucky to make it through, with additional merchantman, obviating the need for Pedestal.

But really it's about keeping the USN in the Atlantic. Which is tricky if Japan is running riot in SEA.
 
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