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  1. The Philippines the 51st state.

    The war actually pushed it up by a year, the original independence date was set as 1946; then the territory was lost to Japan in 1942 and when the war ended in 1945 the US sorta threw their hands up and said "Whatever, a year early." EDIT: Nah I'm wrong, formal independence occured right on...

  2. The Abyss: World War 3, 2014

    You'd think that the first echelon armored units spearheading the attack would be top of the line though, especially at the outbreak of war. I mean, throwing forward obsolescent tanks in mass attacks I can see as definitely being in the Red Army's bag of tricks, but not as an opening gambit y'know?

  3. AHC: The Philippines Fully Incorporated Into the US

    Do the Philippines have to be taken as a whole? What if only Luzon is kept as an American territory/state and Visayas and Mindanao are granted independence (either as one country or two if the Moros insist on going their own way). Keeping only Luzon might make incorporation more 'digestible' and...

  4. TL 191: Where Did It Go Wrong?

    That part I could understand, it's more plausible for the Hitler-type to rise out of the ashes of a defeated nation and it would have been ridiculous to have the larger, more populous United States lose to the Confederacy for a THIRD time. Having a WW1 victorious USA then slide into fascism...

  5. WI: The US exploits the nuclear monopoly to bomb the USSR

    If Stalin dies in the first wave, would the ensuing power vacuum make the war easier? Even under the uniting influence of a war, there's gotta be some kind of power struggle...even if a conventional war is unwinnable, can the USSR be fractured politically? The satellite states/SSRs broken away...

  6. Second Battle of Hawaii

    My last few posts concerned a hypothetical Midway attack where the Japanese codes weren't broken and the garrison went unreinforced. Not an attack on Oahu. I think most everyone is in agreement that the Second Battle of Hawaii posited by OP is implausible and would've been chopped to pieces if...

  7. Second Battle of Hawaii

    The defenders and defensive emplacements would also be subject to dive bombing from the four Japanese carriers, which may be more effective than the naval bombardment. Hiryu and Soryu had done it at Wake.

  8. Second Battle of Hawaii

    The Japanese landing plan definitely sucked but if we assume the US doesn't crack the Japanese naval code there is a slim chance they could carry the island. IOTL the formidable Midway garrison was only because Nimitz knew the Japanese were coming weeks in advance and reinforced Marine Colonel...

  9. Second Battle of Hawaii

    "Blue sky" is not the same as suicidal. Yamamoto may have had a predilection for overly complex plans, but he also had a healthy respect for American industrial capacity and was pessimistic about the prospects of a protracted struggle with the USN (his "six months" quote comes to mind). Pearl...

  10. US initiates war with Japan?

    Good point. American prewar planning always envisioned a defensive phase at the outset of any potential conflict because it was assumed that a Pacific War would be kicked off by Japanese aggression. The idea of putting the USN battle line to use with a preemptive attack would be anathema to all...

  11. US initiates war with Japan?

    In this scenario, it's a matter of when the US gets wind of Japanese intentions. In November, with less than a month until Pearl Harbor, is too little time to plan an offensive operation of their own from scratch, put together a logistics train, and stage forward to the Philippines. They may...

  12. US initiates war with Japan?

    Maybe. Japan had finalized their war plans for the Southern Resource Area and initial attacks on the Philippines and Pearl Harbor by November. If the US received incontrovertible intelligence of Japanese intentions at that time, it might spur Roosevelt to get his licks in first, using the...

  13. US intelligence work out Japan's plans, how well could it go?

    Probably Yorktown then. Ranger and Wasp were assigned to the Atlantic because they were thought to not be survivable enough in the Pacific, I don't see that changing while the Navy still has the more capable Yorktown and Hornet to draw on. And the increased port activity/redeployments likely...

  14. US intelligence work out Japan's plans, how well could it go?

    Though if we accept the premise of the OP, Kimmel would have changed his fleet dispositions; he wouldn't have his carriers scattered piecemeal knowing a blow was going to land. Advance notice of August would have given time to transfer Hornet from the Atlantic to the Pacific as well, if so he chose.

  15. Midway Island Siege?

    Because these are human decisions, and you're looking at this from the omniscient perspective of someone with all the facts in 2017, and not from the perspective of the Americans in 1942. To them, they had a stacked deck and yet at the end of the day they've suffered the second-worst defeat in...

  16. Midway Island Siege?

    This is a good point. At the very least the defeat at sea will cause considerable distress among the Powers That Be in Washington and Pearl Harbor. This was the US Navy's best shot of the war to date, they were reading the cracked Japanese radio intercepts and knew exactly where the Japanese...

  17. Midway Island Siege?

    I wouldn't dismiss that as a consolation prize, since Yamamoto achieved his operational objective of negating the US Navy's offensive force. If anything, keeping Midway is the American consolation prize for having 3 carriers sunk. Each one of those sunk ships had a complement greater than the...

  18. Midway Island Siege?

    It was an element in a larger plan. Yamamoto's goal was the destruction of US carriers in the Pacific. He believed that the Americans were reluctant to risk their remaining carriers in a fleet action, and would need to be lured out of Pearl Harbor where they were inaccessible to the Japanese. A...

  19. Midway Island Siege?

    Why would Yamamoto bother with a siege of Midway after the naval battle is complete? Midway itself was incidental, it was bait to lure the US carriers out from Pearl and force a decisive battle to sink them. In this scenario he's accomplished that so there's no point in hanging around...from the...

  20. Red Storm Rising – WWIII in 1986 - vignettes

    Are you talking about the escort mission to get Providence clear? Reading back in my copy, Chicago herself sank 3 subs (Foxtrot, Victor, and a Tango) and 3 surface ships (2 Grishas and a Krivak), and damaged but didn't kill a Victor. Boston sank 2 subs (Tango and an unidentified twin-screw sub)...
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