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  1. Soviet Union invades Hokkaido. Where would they attack?

    Of course the IJA forces fight to the death. This is almost a given when discussing IJA/IJN forces. They are also fighting an enemy with, as difficult as it may seem to believe, with even MORE firepower than the average Marine unit of the same size. The Red Army forces will be not just combat...
  2. Japanese Commandos

    The SAS used very different, very modern methods. Stealth was not really a massive concern for one, although surprise was. The SAS attacks in the Western Desert were just about the mirror image of the "classic" Ninja sneak in/silent kill/ghost out. They were by surprise, but everyone within...
  3. What if the Iraqi Army had gone South?

    One issue is logistics, a second, closely related one is command and control. The Iraqi Army, like most 3rd World forces, is very light on "tail" and has a fairly short radius of action. The troops, additionally, with the exception of some of the Guards units also had almost pitiful levels of...
  4. Soviet Union invades Hokkaido. Where would they attack?

    What the Soviets lacked were decent open water amphib resources in quantity to put a 3-4 divisions onto Hokkaido in good order. They could have made the invasion work (casualties were not a significant operation concern for the Red Army), but it would have been more difficult for them than is...
  5. Soviet Union invades Hokkaido. Where would they attack?

    The U.S. wanted the USSR to stay out of the Home Islands, however, in the scenario you outline the U.S. would be hard pressed to prevent it without getting a whole different war started. The Soviets would likely have gone after Hokkaido, although they really lacked the skill set or capacity to...
  6. Japanese Commandos

    Yes there was, a REALLY ballsy effort by an IJA Para commando unit, the Giretsu Kuteitai. but it was on Okinawa. Happened late in the war (May, 24, 1945), with the goal of destroying the USAAF fighter presence on the pacified part of the Island that was gutting many of the Kamikaze attacks. Raid...
  7. F6F Bearcat

    A slightly longer lifespan for the two place dive bomber and a slightly shorter one for the Wildcat. The F4F stuck around on the CVE until the end of the war because they were considerably smaller than the F6F or F4U and the Hellcat helped kill the divebomber since it could carry almost the...
  8. Japanese Commandos

    NINJA? Ever hear the saying about never bringing a knife to a gun fight? Ninja were well trained small unit swordsmen, nothing more or less. Japan didn't do any large scale opposed amphibious assaults on the scale of D-Day or even Tarawa, they made small landings or landings on generally...
  9. 1866 Franco-American War

    INVADING Texas from Mexico? Sweet Jesus.:eek: The ONLY people who would consider that as a reasonable action for anything larger than a single troop of horsemen on a raid would be someone utterly unfamiliar with the region. Even the Union Army stayed the hell out of Texas. Mexican or...
  10. 1866 Franco-American War

    Possibly the best result of this sort of war would be to heal the rift between the North and South. Nothing like a foreign enemy to get everyone pulling on the same oar. Might also have a dramatic positive effect on the U.S./Mexican repationship. The U.S. had, in potential, the largest, most...
  11. AH Challange: Battle of the Bulge a major German victory

    Undoubtedly. Hitler had also come to the conclusion, based on many of his later rantings, that the Volk deserved to be punished for proving themselves unable to fulfill Hitler's vision. Nevertheless, it does not alter the fact that the ONLY way to make the Bulge into a major Heer victory is to...
  12. Would the allies actually accept a conditional surrender?

    1. Were are the U.S. and UK going to stop? The Elbe? If so, fine. Otherwise there will be hell to pay as far as Soviet involvement in 2. the war against Japan. In all the recent debate about the end game against Japan in another thread one thing that is not even questioned was the impact of...
  13. AH Challange: Battle of the Bulge a major German victory

    The easiest POD of the entire war. Cancel the damned thing completely. Move ALL the forces used to the East, as well as most of the II SS Panzer Corps. Slow down the Red Army as far from Germany proper for as long as you can so you can evacuate more of the East Prussian civilians and generally...
  14. Would the allies actually accept a conditional surrender?

    1) Would it actually matter all that much if the Western Allies backed down? Stalin was going to get his pound of flesh regardless. 2) The U.S. believed, deeply, that it needed the USSR to join in against the Japanese right up to the last few weeks of the war (remember the Plutonium Bomb...
  15. The Warbirds by Richard Herman, Jr.

    A really second rate techno-thriller.
  16. WWII: U.S. decides to proceed with Japanese invasion

    No, my comment is a statement of fact. Under TODAY'S Geneva Convention use of the Bomb, or any other mass bombing of civilian targets is a War Crime (Protocol I Art 57 & 85). It WAS not a war crime in 1945. The items I listed for Japanese conduct during the war WERE War Crimes at the time, had...
  17. WWII: U.S. decides to proceed with Japanese invasion

    Whether the Bombs altered the storm pattern has long been an interesting theory, although it is lacking in data to back it up (the number of nuclear weapons detonated above ground in the area in August being extremely limited). It is true that both the late October '45 and the lesser remembered...
  18. WWII: U.S. decides to proceed with Japanese invasion

    Hmmm.. If by a major defeat you mean having one of the landings repulsed you may well be correct. The landing in Ariake Bay (near Kanoya) by XI Corps were going to be especially difficult, and there was a chance that at least one of the beachheads might have failed. If you mean serious ship...
  19. WWII: U.S. decides to proceed with Japanese invasion

    Maybe somebody in this thread said that, it wasn't me. While I will say, now that you have brought it up, that the U.S. war end goals were far more "civilized" than their opponents (and arguably at least one ally) they were not baby's breath and roses. It was a WAR War IS mass horror...
  20. WWII: U.S. decides to proceed with Japanese invasion

    As were the actions of the IJA at Nanking, the creation of forced houses of prostitution, execution of surrendered troops, execution of rescued mariners and pilots, abuse of Prisoners of War, starvation of same, forced labor by civilian internees, random execution of civilians by occupation...
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