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It varies on the source. As I said, the Japanese side attributed the explosion and subsequent sinking to TBMs Why would MacArthur, the commanding general in SWPA, not have accurate information on the state of Oldendorf's battle line after the battle was over?

At most they would be a nuisance, and in any regard incapable of stopping a force on what would effectively be a suicide mission anyway. Not too sure about that. The entire Seventh Fleet had 6 BBs, 4 CAs, 5 CLs, 83 DDs, and 25 DEs. Of these 6 battleships, 4 heavy cruisers, 4 light cruisers...

450 aircraft from where? The Seventh Fleet? Discounting Oldendorf's force in Surigao Strait the combined power of TF 77.4 amounted to 18 CVEs (3 per Task Unit - "Taffy"), 9 destroyers, and 13 destroyer escorts. Even historically these forces were scattered and could only offer sporadic...

That's not the argument. The point is that the Japanese Center force, properly led, was strong enough to wipe out the 7th Fleet's CVEs and cause havoc in Leyte Gulf. Even if it was caught and destroyed for it, compared to the role those ships would have historically served later in the war such...

Kurita turned around because he didn't know what he was up against. With a clearer intelligence picture his forces were more than sufficient to brush aside the Taffies and steam into Leyte Gulf. If his entire force got destroyed by Oldendorf or Halsey it would have been worth the sacrifice.

Yes he could have. DEs and Jeep carriers can't stop battleships

Compared to any other fleet in the world besides the US Navy's the Japanese surface forces were still a fearsome instrument of war. Even at Leyte Gulf, if Kurita handled his unit more competently he could have slaughtered both "Taffy" groups in his path and shot up the Gulf itself, which, given...

The majority of Japan's land army was completely intact, and in fact was expanding. The Germans, on the other hand, took catastrophic losses in France and Belorussia during the summer and fall of 1944 which had to be made good by the hasty mobilization of volksgrenadier divisions. The German...

The Germans themselves virtually ensured this after World War I. In light of the experience from 1918 to 1939, only unconditional surrender was acceptable and FDR said as much at the Casablanca Conference. Furthermore, prior to their official entry into the conflict the US War Department drew...

It would look like a bigger version of OTL's Western Front. The Eastern Front was conducted in wide open spaces; there was no beachhead to be broken out of. In the West the Germans would face the impossible task of preventing Allied breakthroughs in Normandy and Southern France under conditions...

The 57mm guns, to my knowledge, were emplaced in Type 89 tank turrets similar to this: The Coast Defense Divisions were not expected to conduct any operational maneuvers but were to stay in place until annihilated. The mobile forces consisted of the tanks, the 200-series divisions, and the...

Not much. Chinese society is racist to varying degrees against non-Han people and they don't catch much flak for it outside the normal "human rights" lectures they get every so often.

According to Giangreco (author of "Hell to Pay," the book in that link), the Japanese eventually settled on a "conservative" estimate of 20 percent of the invasion fleet destroyed before disembarkation; the corresponding American figure was 10 percent, but this included ships taken out of action...

I think it goes without saying that the Japanese would fight ferociously to defend their homeland. Even on Okinawa the regular army units fought well; IIRC Yahara's criticism was more leveled at "Boeitai" conscripts drawn from the local Okinawan population. As for their actual divisions, the...

Okinawa was in large part behind Maj. Gen. Charles Willoughby's "Sinister Ratio" made in response to new developments subsequent to the battle of Saipan. Willoughby's calculations essentially concluded that "2 to 2 and a half Japanese division-equivalents could extract approximately 40,000...

The Army Service Force used 720,000 as the estimated number of replacements needed for "dead and evacuated wounded" through 31 December 1946. As this was exclusive of Navy and Marine demands the combined number of anticipated replacements needed in this category can be eye-balled at about 1...

I don't think the Soviets could have taken Korea or even south Manchuria. They'd likely get stuck battering themselves to death on the urban centers there, and the Primorye front is a nightmare. They might even have lost Vladivostok.

Seems almost Dupuy-esque. In addition to "higher efficiency" (if you could call it that, i.e, the Japanese developing better means to cope with US invasions), the state of supply for the various garrisons on the way to Tokyo improved with each passing island. Compared to New Guinea and the...

Both sides would probably sit and spar with each other over winter like the Japanese predicted. If the Soviets could find extra troops after the division of eastern Europe with Germany they might weigh their options about coming back in the spring with an even bigger force in response. That's...

The various units in the reinforcement group received final notice to move after the 23rd Division's failed counterattack on August 24th (in other words, from August 27th or so); they arrived by September 8/9, too late to participate in the fighting. They consisted of the 2nd Division (11,800...