A Couple of Pacific What ifs

Whilst these came up whilst I was writing my current ASB tl neither of them are ASB of themselves

What effect do you feel it would have had on the course of the war if the Japanese strike had caught all of the US fleet in Harbour

What would be the effect on the course of the war if Japan had decided to single out the Americans and avoid direct conflict with the colonial powers until it had dealt with the Americans, perhaps seeing them as the weak link. Granted they would still go for the Dutch east Indies but they where not a major power as the British and the French where and they had the easiest available oil



Assume that there is a war going on in Europe that is not majorly different from OTL late 1941 for the purposes of the questions

your thoughts are appreciated
 
Whilst these came up whilst I was writing my current ASB tl neither of them are ASB of themselves

What effect do you feel it would have had on the course of the war if the Japanese strike had caught all of the US fleet in Harbour

All of US fleet? ALL of it, not just the Pacific Fleet? This is ASB for two reasons (at least). One - The entire US fleet will not be present at Pearl Harbor. US had other places they needed the fleet to be too, not just in the Pacific. Two, the Japanese would be unable to damage the fleet that much. Their entire attack plan was exactly structured around there being the specific number of ships in the harbor. They had a limited number of airplanes and attacking more ships is not a practical possibility for them.

And if the entire Pacific fleet was destroyed, which is at least theoretically possible, not much changes. By the end of 1942 - mid '43 the USN will have at least parity in carriers if not more than the Japanese and the events unfold as IOTL. And an obligatory link.

What would be the effect on the course of the war if Japan had decided to single out the Americans and avoid direct conflict with the colonial powers until it had dealt with the Americans, perhaps seeing them as the weak link. Granted they would still go for the Dutch east Indies but they where not a major power as the British and the French where and they had the easiest available oil

The British still declare war against them as a show of solidarity and because they see the writing on the wall once the US is attacked. Anyway, 90% of action after the first 4 months was handled by the Americans, so any change is likely negligible. The troops used in those endeavors would probably end up in China, as the Japanese logistic chain was stretched as it was. However, they had to attack Malaya to capture the rubber and copper(?).
 

Ian_W

Banned
What would be the effect on the course of the war if Japan had decided to single out the Americans and avoid direct conflict with the colonial powers until it had dealt with the Americans, perhaps seeing them as the weak link. Granted they would still go for the Dutch east Indies but they where not a major power as the British and the French where and they had the easiest available oil

Then the British declare on Japan, in exchange for a quid-pro-quo of a future declaration on Germany (preceded by the US taking over escorting Atlantic convoys and providing unlimited lend-lease and tech transfer, of course).
 
Japan attacked the USA specifically to get at the British/French/Dutch holdings in SEA which contained oil, tin, rubber, rice, etc which Japan needed to sustain its economy and continue the war in China. Japan could have taken every US holding in the Pacific including Hawaii, Samoa, the PI etc and this would have gained them essentially zero in terms of what they needed/wanted. Therefore if the Japanese are NOT going to attack the British in SEA (and they can't go after the Dutch without going after the British) there is no reason to attack the USA - the two are inextricably tied together.

If the Japanese catch two carriers at PH and then go on to hit the oil tanks and machine shops in a third raid, this sets back the US advance across the Pacific, and may delay TORCH as more shipyard space used for warships vice amphibs and also some ship transfers to the Pacific. Japan will probably take Midway, but no further, and probably no further towards Samoa or Australia, although they might get Port Moresby. On the US side might see a sooner resolution of the torpedo problem as submarine warfare is more important from the get go.

Even had Japan dropped a nuke on Pearl Harbor, this does nothing to help them with very limited shipbuilding capabilities and a marginal merchant fleet in size, difficulties with aircraft engine technology, etc. They just take longer to lose, and the more casualties at Pearl the more pissed off the US is.
 
clarification

I meant just the American Pacific fleet which was bases out of Pearl harbour not all of the entire American fleet that would indeed be ridiculous

Thank you for your feed back however it all helps me to think the Pacific war is not my area of expertise and there is a hall of a lot written about it to mug up on.

The logic to the revised Japanese attack plan is that they see the the Americans as the week link and believe that they will be able to pull off a coup de main taking the Americans out of the picture before confronting the British in Malaya. The logic being that they believe the British will fight tooth and nail but that the Americans lack the proper warrior spirit and will be put off by a bloody nose.
 
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This Might be ASB logic but from what I have read so far the OTL Japanese war plan was not far off ASB logic
 
I meant just the American Pacific fleet which was bases out of Pearl harbour not all of the entire American fleet that would indeed be ridiculous

Thank you for your feed back however it all helps me to think the Pacific war is not my area of expertise and there is a hall of a lot written about it to mug up on.

The logic to the revised Japanese attack plan is that they see the the Americans as the week link and believe that they will be able to pull off a coup de main taking the Americans out of the picture before confronting the British in Malaya. The logic being that they believe the British will fight tooth and nail but that the Americans lack the proper warrior spirit and will be put off by a bloody nose.

You have to remember the biggest thing compelling Japan to go to war with the United States was the embargo in place which damaged their war effort in China. The US provided Japan with a significant percentage of the Empire's crude oil and scrap iron exports, which were cut off when the Japanese invaded Indochina after the fall of France.

They needed to bring the oil rich Dutch East Indies under their control, or face collapse within a year. The US were identified as a hostile threat, and between Japan and Indonesia stood the Phillippines and to a lesser extent Imperial forces in Malaysia.

They gambled that they could knock out the US Pacific Fleet and hoped to make the US come to terms. It was hoped that if they inflicted heavy enough casualties the US would despair and give in but the exact opposite was achieved and no matter what Japan did from that point there was no way they could ever defeat the US.

Basically Japan needed to take the DEI to sustain their war effort, which mean't attacking the US and Britain at the same time.
 
This Might be ASB logic but from what I have read so far the OTL Japanese war plan was not far off ASB logic

Their war plan was not put on a strategically sound footing. It involved a lot of wishful thinking, blatant ignoring of inconvenient realities and more self confidence than actual power.

The Japanese had no other end game except for 'if we strike them hard enough, then it will be too expensive for them to fight us and they will give up'.

The fact that the US was an enemy the Empire of Japan could not actively compel to submission was not lost on them. They just choose to, lacking any alternative at all, go into wishful thinking. IJA basically abrogated the responsibility to plan or envision any sort of war plan against the US, leaving it to the Navy instead. The Navy was wedded to the concept of decisive battle and believed that, with one strike, they could win naval supremacy in the Pacific and dictate the events for a period of time, set up 'impregnable' bastions and await US response. They knew beyond a shred of doubt that the US could mount an overwhelming response. They just assumed the US public will not have the stomach for a prolonged fight over Pacific islands.

So it was not ASB per se. It is a curious mixture of outright stupidity, cultural stereotypes and prejudices, pride and of fear of being a second or third rate power. The Japanese also knew that the best (and only) time to act was in 1941. After that even the infinitesimally small chance of, for lack of better word, success would shrink to negative portion of the scale.
 
Interesting

I will work this into the tale when I get that far, its always good however to bounce ideas off of other people as there is a lot of information to boil down into a coherent narrative before you consider butterflies
 
What effect do you feel it would have had on the course of the war if the Japanese strike had caught all of the US fleet in Harbour
In tactical sense, assuming more or less the same flow of events, the loss of say Enterprise and Lexington at Pearl Harbour would have far reaching consequences. They will have to move Wasp in Pacific in late 1941, or at the latest after Saratoga is torpedoed, but that only gives US 3 active carriers. You have fewer US raids before spring, and if the political decision is still taken to raid Japan (a big mistake, even bigger than OTL), conceivably by Hornet and Yorktown, then you only have Wasp at the Coral Sea. If they commit Wasp -foolishly- it will be lost (even if it sinks Shoho), if not Port Moresby is assaulted, or alternatively the invasion is still cancelled due to increasing air attacks on the invasion convoy from Port Moresby and Australia, and Shokaku and Zuikaku might otherwise be intact for Midway.

If you have a 6 vs. 3 or a 5 vs. 2 or even just a 4 vs. 2 at Midway, the US loses 9 in 10, whether the invasion of Midway fails or not will be hardly relevant compared to the loss of US carriers.

Then the japanese are free to implement FS, how that will go is another matter, but no doubt the japanese will advance further, the front being further from the mainland for longer more raw materials will reach japanese factories for longer, they would have a larger part of their CV force intact (if they don't foolishly blunder like at Midway OTL), and it will make it that much costlier for the US when they start their offensive, if they still start from the South Pacific then it will be very bloody, alternatively they go straight for the Central Pacific, but the japanese will be somewhat stronger than in OTL, especially flleet wise.

If Port Moresby falls, northern Australia will be bombed, maybe the japanese might try small scale invasions to scare them off, even a partly successful FS will greatly reduce and make more difficult (maybe even cut) the flow of supplies from US, i don't know how the australian leadership might react in that situation (as i understand, their leadership was pretty inept, especially things like how they were treating their own soldiers and citizens)
 
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If you have a 6 vs. 3 or a 5 vs. 2 or even just a 4 vs. 2 at Midway, the US loses 9 in 10, whether the invasion of Midway fails or not will be hardly relevant compared to the loss of US carriers.

I do not think Nimitz would actually accept the battle on those terms. Midway was expandable, just as Wake Island was. And by November 1942, Essex class ships start coming. By March '43 parity is restored. Meanwhile, the Japanese still do not have logistics to pull off a successful invasion of Australia.
 
We all know that Japan would have never been able to invade the American mainland, but people forget exactly how important the capture of pearl harbour and midway island would have been. With the effective destruction of the Pacific fleet, the Japanese would not Experience midway losses, and the capture of Hawaii would allow any U.S. counter attack to be spotted and attacked from various angles
 
We all know that Japan would have never been able to invade the American mainland, but people forget exactly how important the capture of pearl harbour and midway island would have been. With the effective destruction of the Pacific fleet, the Japanese would not Experience midway losses, and the capture of Hawaii would allow any U.S. counter attack to be spotted and attacked from various angles

There is no chance the Japanese could take Pearl Harbor. They didn't begin to have the lift to assault an island with three defending divisions. Midway, certainly, especially if the Americans didn't try to hold it. Pearl Harbor, no way, this is sea mammal territory.
 
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