Depends on any number of factors. Prince of Wales was sunk in large part because of a lucky hit near the propeller shafts. Japanese shipboard torpedoes were also much more powerful than air dropped ones. According to a 1944 BuShips report, "Vulnerability of US Naval Vessels to attack by...
A direct amphibious landing on Lungga Point sounds almost suicidal. Picture the traffic jam created by packing the narrow area between Guadalcanal, Savo, and Tulagi with assault shipping and escorts, plus the kind of target that would have made.
I think the biggest problem was, as I said, the...
That's true. It took both Ichiki and Kawaguchi getting shredded for the Japanese to realize the Marines were a serious threat. After that they sent elements of the 2nd and 38th divisions to the NEI in preparation for the offensive in October. But even then they underestimated the number of...
I'll have to check my copy of Rikugun for the approximate positions of Japanese forces at that time, but my inclination is that there wasn't much in the south seas islands and major reinforcement would have had to come from the NEI or Asian mainland.
The problem for the Japanese was that they...
This isn't controversial at all, depending on the timetable. If the Japanese rushed a division to Guadalcanal right off the bat they could have won, though by the time of the Battle of Santa Cruz the US defenses were likely too strong. Even with both sides' carrier forces exhausted after Santa...
Soviet fortified regions were a constant headache for Japanese planners and they repeatedly adjusted their offensive schemes to compensate for them. But any way you approach it I don't think they could have avoided heavy losses. The Reds had bands of interlocking firing positions, usually...
First, thank you for your service, Carl.
Generally, Soviet divisions in the Far East sat at up to 85% of wartime establishment (per Japanese estimates, p.19). After the German invasion, mobilization increased total manpower east of Lake Baikal from 651,000 in June 1941 to 1,161,000 in December...
The Soviet plan for war against Japan in 1940 called for 24 rifle divisions, 4 motorized rifle divisions, 2 tank divisions, 4 cavalry divisions, and 8 tank brigades (in addition to the various fortified regions on the Manchurian border, the Amur Flotilla, Pacific Fleet, etc.). Air Forces would...
Throwing in some data which may be informative. Bear in mind that for many of these cases the time duration is relatively short (~1 month or less) and may not reflect your chance of surviving the entire campaign in a given theater or time period. It is mostly American and German as there is a...
I don't think Korea would have been invaded under pretty much any circumstances where there wasn't fighting in Japan proper. It was too isolated and directly adjacent to massive Japanese forces in Manchuria and China.
The projected troop list for Downfall was:
* 14 divisions for Kyushu
* 25...
The war in China and the US/Dutch oil embargo. The oil embargo was on 1 August - on 9 August it was formally agreed to concentrate all resources and planning toward attacking the Western Allies and SE Asian countries.
It's also interesting that Japanese Army intelligence specifically cited the Battle of Smolensk as the point where they concluded the German-Soviet war was likely to be a long one. This was one of the factors that led to them not invading Siberia in the summer/fall of 1941.
It's an apt comparison in the sense that both cases involve the use of terror to win a war. Just because the Pacific war was an example of legitimate defense (from the Allied side) doesn't mean it was right if they did it during the course of the conflict. Murder is still murder.
St. John Henry...
I understand the thinking, but as a Catholic I could never countenance it. If something is intrinsically evil, it should never be on the table - period. Even if more people died as a result, that would be on the conscience of the Japanese militarists, not the United States.
It comes from the inherent immorality of the action. Even if a good result (the end of the war) could be brought about from nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki (and the earlier firebombing campaign) that doesn't make the acts themselves good. That's consequentialist thinking, which opens the door for...