A different Coral Sea

Ok, there is a thread active right now that asks what (if anything) was proved/learned from the battle of the coral sea. That thread inspired my related question.

In the spring summer of 1942, the IJN had three ops in the works, the original BotCS, the aleutians campaign, and the BoMW. this meant that they were committing 9 carriers to combat, and orignally were going to use the Shokaku & Zuikaku again at midway.

Now, here is the order of battle for these three ops:

Coral Sea
Japan = 2 CV's Shokaku & Zuikaku + 1 CVL Shoho
USA = 2 CV's Lexington & Yorktown

Midway
Japan = 4 CV's Akagi Hiryū Kaga Sōryū
USA = 3 CV's Yorktown Enterprise Hornet

Aleutians campaign (same time as midway basically).
Japan = 1 CV Junyō + 1 CVL Ryūjō.
USA = No carriers

So, the Japanese have 7 CV's and 2 CVL's ready to hit the USN with, and the USN has 4 CV's to fight back with.

My question is, what would have happened if (for whatever reason), the Japanes had been forced to delay the OTL Coral Sea battle, and in the meantime decide to put the midway/aleutian campaign on hold until after Australia is well and truely isolated by capture of the island groups east of the solomons, and sent these 9 carriers to enforce the advance?

Any ideas for how this campaign might have gone?
 
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sharlin

Banned
You'd have to skip the carriers under refit which the main body of the KB was. So Coral sea where the IJN throws every carrier its got against the USN, if the USN knew about it they would probably not try to face that armada with just two carriers and might just withdraw from an unwinable fight.
 
So what would this then mean for Australia? Does the USN get forced to watch the Japanes consolidate their control over the Solomons and still not be able to risk a strike once the Japanese have land based air on Guadalcanal?

And what happens if the IJN then moves against Samoa, Fiji, New Caledonia, and even as far as the Island of Papeete?

If they went about this campaign one island chain at a time, building airbases as they went before moving to the next chain, would the allied counter offensive have to wait for the Essex class to arrive, in numbers, before it could go forward?
 
To answer a question with a question; would the IJN conducting a major operation in the south have formulated an overly sophisticated plan which deployed 3 major task forces out of mutually supporting range of one another so one can be defeated in detail causing the entire plan to collapse?

I could envisage a campain where large IJN task forces zig and zag and one hefty arm zigs right into the jaws of a USN carrier fleet which promptly destroys is and causes that arm of the campaign to utterly fail. So while Port Moresby or the Solomons (or whatever) landing is successful the other is a failure and the carriers used to support it are destroyed without causing commensurate losses to the USN. Thus the carefully designed and delicate plans of the Japanese lead to lopsided results.
 
Now, here is the order of battle for these three ops:

Coral Sea
Japan = 2 CV's Shokaku & Zuikaku + 1 CVL Shoho
USA = 2 CV's Lexington & Yorktown

Midway
Japan = 4 CV's Akagi Hiryū Kaga Sōryū
USA = 3 CV's Yorktown Enterprise Hornet

Aleutians campaign (same time as midway basically).
Japan = 1 CV Junyō + 1 CVL Ryūjō.
USA = No carriers

So, the Japanese have 7 CV's and 2 CVL's ready to hit the USN with, and the USN has 4 CV's to fight back with.

This snapshot doesnt not reflect the entire potiential strength during the probable campaign time. The Saratoga left refit at the end of May and missed the Midway battle by a couple days. The Wasp arrived in the Pacific at the end of July and participated in the initial landings on Guadalcanal.
 
And Yorktown is undamaged, so reallisticaly you've got 6 and possibly 7 fleet carriers against at least 4 and possibly 5 fleet carriers, with two Japanese light carriers wasting their time in the arctic. The Americans got lucky at Midway and caught the Japanese refueling. With the extra Japanese carriers thats unlikely to happen. The battle is possibly going to go on into the following day by which time the Japanese assault force will have arrived. Once they start landing Midways doomed even if the Japanese carrier force is eventually driven off, which is unlikely.
 
The OP posits no Coral Sea or Midway/Aluetians and instead a major campaign in the archepelegic area off North East Australia using the ships slated for those operations, unless I'm mistaken. In this case I can see the IJN outsmarting themselves like they did at Midway/Aleutians by too much complexity and operations too far apart to be mutually supporting but likely to screw the others in the event of failure.
 
I knew I should have read it more carefully, but other than the location I stand by what I said. Without a large element of luck the US forces will be defeated. The battle would be somewhere in the Solomans. Yamamoto needs a decieve victory over the American Fleet to he hopes drive the US to the conference table. He also knows the US will have to respond in the sea lanes to Australia and New Zealand are threatend. In this case Japans light carriers would be providing cover for the Battleships.
 
What was the luck, catching the Japanes refuelling their aircraft? Perhaps, but the Japanese built up an overly complex plan and the USN made sublime use of the intel available to them to get into a great position for the counter-strike after the Midway based planes had done their bit.

In case anyone hasn't noticed, while I have no time for the US Army I think the USN/USMC was a better fighting force than the Wehrmacht.
 
Ok, got some good stuff here!

The OP posits no Coral Sea or Midway/Aluetians and instead a major campaign in the archepelegic area off North East Australia using the ships slated for those operations, unless I'm mistaken.
You are correct.:D

Historically, we have these dates for the battles that would be fought OTL:
Coral Sea Between 4–8 May 1942
Midway/Aleutians Between 4 and 7 June 1942
Guadalcanal campaign Between August 7, 1942 and February 9, 1943

I would want to have the Midway/Aleutian forces combined with the Coral Sea carriers, so at worst the combined fleet would sail no later than OTL MW/AI forces.

This would give us the start of TTL's operations in early June, and proceeding in pace to match the ability the the Japanese to construct and operate airbases in the island chains NE of Australia. So lets say that the Solomons get several airbases fully up and running before the IJN decides to attack further east. And not just fighter fields, but airbases big enough to handle anything in the Japanese arsenal.


I knew I should have read it more carefully.:mad: I stand by what I said. Without a large element of luck the US forces will be defeated. The battle would be somewhere in the Solomans. Yamamoto needs a decieve victory over the American Fleet to he hopes drive the US to the conference table. He also knows the US will have to respond in the sea lanes to Australia and New Zealand are threatend.

I agree, as there really is no choice other than to abandon Australia in order to preserve the existing USN carriers. With the campaign starting up no later than OTL midway, the USN has Just the 4 CV's availible initially if they want to hit the Japanese in the northern/central solomons, before the first airbase becomes operational on Guadalcanal. If instead, the USN waits for the Saratoga and Wasp to be availible, then the US counter offensive will not take place before mid June 1942. Note that the Japanese airbase on Guadalcanal is historically not operational until say mid August or so.

OTOH, was it possible to launch TTL offensive before the OTL MW/AI operation?
 
I seem to remember John Lundstrom in his book based on the first six months of the Pacific War writing about the considerable land based bombers in the Coral Sea so even if KB had showed up in total force, their having to contend with for example with the B17 and B25 bombers would have led to some heavy losses to KB. Remember a threat to Australia would also force the RN to divert their Indian Ocean assets into the region as well.
 
I seem to remember John Lundstrom in his book based on the first six months of the Pacific War writing about the considerable land based bombers in the Coral Sea so even if KB had showed up in total force, their having to contend with for example with the B17 and B25 bombers would have led to some heavy losses to KB. Remember a threat to Australia would also force the RN to divert their Indian Ocean assets into the region as well.

And a bit late, but welcome to the thread.:D

I think that we can safely discount any B17/B25/B26 threat to the KB in 1942. Even the B24 will not be effective sans the Aleutian islands campaign lessons learned by the 11th airforce. Remember, without the lessons learned in OTL Aleutian campaign, the army bombers are going to be wasting their efforts with high altitude attacks (as they did at midway). It was only the 11th airforce that learned that to be effective against moving targets they need to be at low altitude to score hits. Without that, the KB would not suffer any great damage from long range US army bombers, even if they should manage to locate the IJN in the first place.
 
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I seem to remember John Lundstrom in his book based on the first six months of the Pacific War writing about the considerable land based bombers in the Coral Sea so even if KB had showed up in total force, their having to contend with for example with the B17 and B25 bombers would have led to some heavy losses to KB. Remember a threat to Australia would also force the RN to divert their Indian Ocean assets into the region as well.

I think that we can safely discount any B17/B25/B26 threat to the KB in 1942. ...

I'll second that last, at least partially. Gamble in 'Fortress Rabaul' describes at some length the USAAF attacks on Japanese ships in the South pacific during 1942. Until the low level attack techniques were conceived and mastered the medium and heavy bombers had little effect on ships underway. Like several recent historians Gamble revisited Japanese records and accounted for what was actually sunk on the dates the US attempted its bomber sorties.

Against those docked it was a different story and two or three were hit in Rabaul harbor with spectacular results, but otherwise the USAAF failed vs the Japanese war & cargo ships when attacking from medium and high altitudes.

The two brief USN carrier raids in the South Pacific in February/March 1942 did as much damage/disruption to Japanese cargo ship ops as the USAAF in the first half of 1942. Certainly a lot more per sortie.

After the low level attack techiniques were introduced in combat the situation changed dramatically.
 
... Even the B24 will not be effective sans the Aleutian islands campaign lessons learned by the 11th airforce. .... It was only the 11th airforce that learned that to be effective against moving targets they need to be at low altitude to score hits. ....

Do you have a good source to recommend on this subject. The USAC nearly abandoned development or training in low level attack techniques some time in the 1930s. I'm interested in how these were revived from 1942.
 
You have to explain why Yamamoto'd delay (especially after Doolittle's little stunt:rolleyes:), when he's convinced of the need to bring the Pacific Fleet to "decisive battle". That was, don't forget, the reason IJN attacked Pearl: to cripple the Fleet while Japan built her *ahem* impregnable barrier defense in SWPA.
 
Do you have a good source to recommend on this subject. The USAC nearly abandoned development or training in low level attack techniques some time in the 1930s. I'm interested in how these were revived from 1942.

Thanks for your input! And welcome to the thread.

My own eye opening in this came from an excellent book titled: "The Thousand Mile War" by Brian Garfield.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0912006838/ref=sib_dp_kd#reader-link

I have to say I had often wondered in reading about the battle of midway, why the heavy bombers had not had more success. Now I know. The author gives quite a good look into the why's and how's of the problems of high level attacts. Again, a very good read.
 
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You have to explain why Yamamoto'd delay (especially after Doolittle's little stunt:rolleyes:), when he's convinced of the need to bring the Pacific Fleet to "decisive battle". That was, don't forget, the reason IJN attacked Pearl: to cripple the Fleet while Japan built her *ahem* impregnable barrier defense in SWPA.

Welcome to the thread.

I think I would need to explain how the Japanese suddenly decide to look more realistically at what they can hope to achieve/hold, like concentration on one area till it's a done deal.

If the Japanese want to isolate Australia, the best way is going to be with land based air interdiction from forward airbases. And to get these forward airbases they need to capture the islands where these bases need to be. Using their (at the time, and not going to last forever) naval advantage to complete this task, then free's up the KB for a maximum effort against Midway a bit later.

I would also direct you to the above post, as one of the many things the book listed there clarified was that the Japanese didn't know that Doolittles bombers flew off the Hornet.:rolleyes:
 
You'd have to skip the carriers under refit which the main body of the KB was. So Coral sea where the IJN throws every carrier its got against the USN, if the USN knew about it they would probably not try to face that armada with just two carriers and might just withdraw from an unwinable fight.

I forgot to welcome you to the thread!:D

Do you have a link for me on this? I would like the speed up the 'clash of the titans' to sometime between OTL CS and MW, but if it turns out that the historical date for MW is the earliest possibility, then so be it.
 
The thing is though the USN would likely have to be involved in any foray into the Coral Sea by the entire KB and they would be augmented by the AAF bombers and fighters.
 
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