1941 - invading Hawaii, possible?

[DougM]

so let me see if i get this right. The UzS navy (which even on Dec 8th is larger overall then the Japanese Navy) and with the supoort and ability to land supplies and troops on the rest of the unoccupied islands and with the HUGE problems that Japan is going yo have supplying the occupation. force. Wont be able to pull off a landing from 2600 miles away but somehow Japan is going to pull one off from 3800 miles away…. umm. i really don't know what yo say about that. Anything i can think to say would get me a week vacation…
Lets just say that the idea that Japan can take the island but it will take years for the US to be able to take it back is a bit illogical.
And considering that the US will be able yo stage in the rest if the islands while the IJA runs out of supplies as the IJN cant supply them from that far…

 

[Athelstane]

I have read Glenn's Tinkerbell scenario. I'm skeptical at best. And I don't recall him accounting for Enterprise, Lexington, and Saratoga, though I could be forgetting that part.

Read it and weep, and fear the Spider:

Naval battle plan and fleet doctrine.​

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To secure victory in a decisive naval battle at Hawaii, the IJN would require reconnaissance superiority in the theater. A fundamental feature of Tinkerbell therefore is to quickly occupy favorable scouting positions - French Frigate Shoals, Kauai, and to the west of the Big Island - and use them to achieve domination in the battle for situational awareness . In addition to these efforts, flying boats of the 24th Air Flotilla fly in and join the battle commencing within hours of the attack on the 7th.​

​

In each phase of the battle, the IJN carriers operate behind a wall of scouting resources far beyond what the USN can muster in reply. During the first days, while Enterprise and Lexington each would have had to divert a large portion of their indigenous air wings to scouting, Kido Butai is, much like a spider, sitting deeply in a web of interlocked scouting units, each scouring large tracts of ocean. Given Yamaguchi's inherent strike range advantage, the likelihood is high of his getting in punishing preemptive strikes on the USN carriers. And in this scenario, neither USN carrier is capable of surviving even a single strike by Kido Butai.​

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During the second phase op (Dec 14th-16th), Kauai and Johnston are already established as forward air bases, such that the movement of ships towards the objectives at Maui and Hawaii are well scouted. Here again, Kido Butai is to operate behind a wall of assets (seaplane tenders, flying boats and cruisers) thrusting a host of search aircraft out to the east, beyond Hawaii towards the West Coast. Unless Lexington and Enterprise had done better than expected, Saratoga's only prudent option would be to stand well clear of the fighting until the arrival of Ranger, Wasp, Hornet and Yorktown by January 5th-10th.​

What is the Japanese counterpart to Wehraboo, by the way?

 

[Draconis]

What is the Japanese counterpart to Wehraboo, by the way?

Wehraboo-san?

 

[Athelstane]

Wehraboo-san?

According to the chaps at DerScheisser, the favored term of art is "Tojoboo." I learn something new everyday.

 

[Draconis]

According to the chaps at DerScheisser, the favored term of art is "Tojoboo." I learn something new everyday.

Are you sure you can trust such a shitty website?

 

[sonofpegasus]

Why not? do they talk crap!!!!!

 

[Athelstane]

Are you sure you can trust such a shitty website?

To be sure, it's a meme subreddit; but on the other hand, they know Wehraboos when they seem 'em.

It's also true, though, that on *this* website, you have to distinguish the merely contrarian gadflies. I tend to think that's what Glenn really was, on most days. Spiderweb analogies notwithstanding.

 

[CalBear]

I don't know about no Italy. The early stages of the Italian campaign were very necessary to unsnarl the Allies' shipping situation, which for all that they were way better about it than the Japanese was still a significant limitation. They desperately need the trans-Suez route reopened if they're going to land on the Continent again.

Sicily and southern Italy were also fairly important in the unfortunate, but ever necessary "blooding" of the U.S. Army, especially the officer corps, the Bocage was not really a good place for company and field grade officers to learn their craft, but it was even worse for General Officers.

There is also the very inportant addition of the Foggia region and the establishment of the major air base complexes there that allowed the CBO to strike most of Southeastern Europe, including the Romanian oil fields and do it, once the Mustang became available in quantity, with fighter escort all the way in and out of the target area.

 

[RanulfC]

This scheme strikes me as a way to lose the war before the end of 1941.

Ah yes, the "Fenwick" Strategy. Hmmm, yes that MIGHT work

Randy

 

[RanulfC]

I haven't read the cited "plan" but am I correct in noting that he's bringing the main IJN fleet assets to the party?

Because that would actually be (maybe) a 'semi-plausible' justification for this operation. Not an 'actual' invasion' (though they get enough "6's" it could flow that way) but following through on the plans to put troops ashore to try and finish wrecking Pearl Harbor but more specifically to force an American 'reaction' to the Japanese action. Aka "Kantai Kessen" turned up to 11 and in about the worst possible place but arguably a 'best-time' for it to happen in the Japanese perspective.

In 'theory' the US has to react and send "the" fleet ASAP both to defend the island's and 'punish' the Japanese but the US public is going to go nuts from being "mad" and "scared" at the same time, just like OTL. Unlike OTL there's going to be the 'example' of the Japanese 'invading' the "US" right there in front of the American Public so the calls to "do something" are going to arguably be pretty overwhelming to put it mildly.

So as a 'set up' for the Decisive Battle it has 'some' draw but frankly the amount of assumed things that have to go absolutely right and the amount of Japanese planning and resources that need to be involved HEAVILY argue against it no matter how optimistic the Japanese are. The main problem is that 'doctrine-wise' it is exactly the opposite and in many spots contradictory to the actual doctrine as the Japanese fleet is the one at the end of it's logistics chain and vulnerable to being outflanked and cut off.

No matter how well argued and researched the issue at the end is that it actually nets Japan nothing for the expenditure of resources and effort it requires.

Randy

 

[Athelstane]

Sicily and southern Italy were also fairly important in the unfortunate, but ever necessary "blooding" of the U.S. Army, especially the officer corps, the Bocage was not really a good place for company and field grade officers to learn their craft, but it was even worse for General Officers.

There is also the very inportant addition of the Foggia region and the establishment of the major air base complexes there that allowed the CBO to strike most of Southeastern Europe, including the Romanian oil fields and do it, once the Mustang became available in quantity, with fighter escort all the way in and out of the target area.

It's true - and what you may be identifying are negative collateral butterflies for the Allies in the (very) unlikely event that the Japanese actually pull off an invasion of Oahu of the sort proposed by Glenn. That is, working from my assumption that the inevitable American effort to retake Hawaii in 1942 imposes some significant delay (even of just a few months) on the clearing of Africa. Because this would push any HUSKY operation into the fall of '43, and at that point, you're just running out of time to do the preparation for a spring '44 Second Front.

That said, these prices might be mitigated. The only obvious unit combat experience I see lost for the U.S. is the 82nd's participation in AVALANCHE. But both they, and the Big Red One, had been involved in North Africa and Sicily, so that is still a significant amount of combat experience. (There are of course a number of individual American army officers here who might be losing out on Italian combat ops before transferring to OVERLORD units.) I do wonder a bit if the lessons learned OTL from the failure to use shore bombardment at Salerno would have butterflies for OVERLORD, but . . . Otherwise, it is a price the Allies just have to pay, alas.

As for Foggia: It's a little hard to make out how the Mediterranean would play out in this timeline. But assuming that the Italian government does fall and that the Germans do settle on some kind of defensible line southern Italy, even if Churchill can get nothing more than a minimal holding effort, they could still surely flesh out an adequate airbase at location a little further south, like Taranto. Or, maybe not.

Of course, these modest benefits to Hitler would be paid for by what would amount to the noisiest suicide act by a great power in World history on the other side of the planet.

 

[Athelstane]

Maybe this can be a coda for this thread. This photo was posted yesterday at the WarshipPorn subreddit yesterday:

This is a portion of the U.S. Pacific Fleet mobilized for the Marshall Islands campaign in early 1944.

Mind you, there's nothing more powerful than escort carriers and old Standard battleships visible here. In short, this is the "B Team," and only a small slice of even that.

In the end, it didn't matter whether Japan tried to follow up Pearl Harbor with a conquest of Oahu. This was the avalanche waiting for her at the of this road, and by launching such a devastating surprise attack, she had guaranteed that the avalanche would not stop until it ended up in Tokyo Bay.