A march into India, 1942

[Hyperion]

While the main Japanese fleet does what.... nothing?

http://www.navweaps.com/index_oob/OOB_WWII_Pacific/OOB_WWII_Combined_Fleet.htm

After Midway, the Japanese Navy completely reorganized their aircraft carrier forces and land based air units.

They may still have had a powerful surface fleet, but afte Midway, the loss of carriers and pilots pretty much crippled their offensive options.

Two remaining fleet carriers and several light carriers, against the US who despite the loss of Lexington and Yorktown had managed to build up a powerful force of four carriers, and a heavy escort force. This isn't taking into account several fast battleships that started arriving after June of 1942.

 

[Cryptic]

http://www.navweaps.com/index_oob/OOB_WWII_Pacific/OOB_WWII_Combined_Fleet.htm

After Midway, the Japanese Navy completely reorganized their aircraft carrier forces and land based air units.

They may still have had a powerful surface fleet, but afte Midway, the loss of carriers and pilots pretty much crippled their offensive options.

And even crippled, the IJN remained lethally competitive at the Guadacanal battles and could still manage offensive operations in the Eastern Solomons.

Two remaining fleet carriers and several light carriers, against the US who despite the loss of Lexington and Yorktown had managed to build up a powerful force of four carriers, and a heavy escort force. This isn't taking into account several fast battleships that started arriving after June of 1942.

Growing U.S. naval strength was only half the answer. Through out 1942, there were very few U.S infantry divisions that were full trained by U.S. standards. Absent a dire threat to U.S. territory, U.S. society and military practice did not have the tolerance for casualties levels that using partially trained units offensively would produce.

As a side note, the U.S. could have ended the war in both theatres by 1944 had the U.S. society supported military practices that were the norm with the Soviets, Germans or Japanese.

 

[Faeelin]

Any successful Japanese invasion of India has this big, nasty elephant trap waiting for it.
Which is that as soon as they leave the jungle and get onto the plains, they are an underequipped light infantry army facing a mechanised army with tanks that can open theirs like can-openers at will, and all the artillary they need.
Whil fighting on top of one of their major logistics base (India), as opposed to carrying everying all the way from Japan (almost) on mules...

Is it one of the Logistics bases? AQuit India Campaign with the Japanese at the gates would be a nasty mess.

 

[Snowman23]

And even crippled, the IJN remained lethally competitive at the Guadacanal battles and could still manage offensive operations in the Eastern Solomons.

Their is a difference between the IJN and the Kido Butai. After Midway they were largely ineffective if I am not mistaken. The IJN surface fleet meanwhile was highly effective at Guadalcanal yes, but that was in night actions where they had a distinct advantage in training and the use of their famous long lance torpedoes. Unless the Japanese surface fleet can get into the same conditions as the battles of Tassaforonga or Savo Island, then they are not as big a threat as in the beginning of the war. Most of the carrier battles around the Solomon's were fought to draws, with the Japanese coming out on the losing end as their elite pre-war carrier air arm was chipped away at.

 

[T3h_shammy]

Lets not just attack the largest nation in the world by population but lets also attack the second largest in the world. Meanwhile we are engaged with the most powerful industrial nation every created as well. What an idea.

 

[Ak-84]

Historically when the Japanese began pouring into Burma, there were British units and formations which began moving from North Africa and did not stop until the had engaged the Japanese. If you have a full fledged invasion, all of a sudden there is a massive movement of men and material from elsewhere including from Britain.

Might affect Torch landings.

 

[Cryptic]

Lets not just attack the largest nation in the world by population but lets also attack the second largest in the world. Meanwhile we are engaged with the most powerful industrial nation every created as well. What an idea.

It was a little moe complex than that. Only one of those three nations (USA) was a unified.

A better description would be: Lets attack the largest nation by population (currently bitterly divided amongst itself politically and socially and is in a state of civil war).

Then lets attack the second most populous nation:

Well, actually, we are already fighting that nation, so taking the war to them instead of waiting while they grow stronger is not entirely illogical (1944-45). This nation is currently under the control of a foreign power and is increasily resistive about that. Our goal is not to dominate the entire nation, just destroy the British power base, expecially in the eastern most portion. In short, we are going to "kick in the door" and see how stable the structure is. It also has deep internal divisions and a significant percentage of the population does not even feel that they belong to the "nation" (muslims).

 

[basileus]

I can see a Japanese military invasion of the Bengal from Burma turn into one big clusterfuck.

It would make for a dangerous development anyway. Before the invasion can be properly launched (in fall), several thousand miles southeast Watchtower-Guadalcanal would end quicker in an American victory, in, say, a couple months, due to less Japanese land forces committed, with mostly naval losses. In New Guinea MacArthur, on the other hand, has even more of a hard time on the Kokoda Trail (where the Japanese haven't squandered their force in the suicidal march across the jungle to Port Moresby).
Then, right when the British are putting their maximum effort at El Alamein, the Japanese strike into India, after strong-arming even Thailand into providing at least a division for the effort. The operation is two-staged. Their first objective is the coastal area of Chittagong. When most british forces are pinned south, they strike north in the general direction of Dimapur.
The final target of the first phase of the campaign is gaining the Meghalaya hills and most of the Assam plain, thenhead straight into Bengal proper to Kolkata, with a flaking movement from the north which by that time could be assisted by (light) armor.
Would that succeed? Difficult to say, but probability is better than in 1944.
It is likely that the Americans would have to divert significant forces, especially aircraft and tanks, from the Solomons and New Guinea to the Indian theater at the end of 1942: it could even adversely affect the prosecution of Torch towards Tunisia, allowing Rommel precious time to regroup, recover and attack into Algeria along with the Italians.
And the prospect of massive unrest between the Indians is not so unlikely - while I'm pretty sure that most of the Indian army would not betray the British, at least not for the Japanese.

 

[TheNordicBrit]

How would the Indians react? Would we see more revolts against Britain? Or would we see this invasion as a unifying force in India against an attacking army?

 

[Hyperion]

Historically when the Japanese began pouring into Burma, there were British units and formations which began moving from North Africa and did not stop until the had engaged the Japanese. If you have a full fledged invasion, all of a sudden there is a massive movement of men and material from elsewhere including from Britain.

Might affect Torch landings.

No it would not, prior to Torch, none of those US divisions involved in the invasion where ready. Some divisions literally arrived off the beaches of North Africa directly from the US, without stopping in England or anywhere else first.

 

[Snake Featherston]

The Japanese make sweeping territorial gains at the onset only to then be destroyed as a result of having tiny overstretched armies spread out over a wide area where their usual treatment of civilians creates compounding problems for them.

 

[perfectgeneral]

While withdrawing forces from the Pacific gives the USN and marines a relatively free hand, it does offer a threat in being that stays intact and a chance to isolate China completely.

If Japan takes China and India, no amount of island capture in the Pacific will matter much. The Emperor could set up court on the mainland. A longer war or even a conditional surrender.

If Japan takes China and India. A big if.

 

[Hyperion]

While withdrawing forces from the Pacific gives the USN and marines a relatively free hand, it does offer a threat in being that stays intact and a chance to isolate China completely.

If Japan takes China and India, no amount of island capture in the Pacific will matter much. The Emperor could set up court on the mainland. A longer war or even a conditional surrender.

If Japan takes China and India. A big if.

The industrial base in China is a joke compared to mainland Japan, wich was very heavily industrialized, and prior to the B-29 raids, had a well built up infrastructure network.

If you want to talk about something like that, can a moderator please move this to the ASB forum.

 

[Mark Ford]

How would the Indians react? Would we see more revolts against Britain? Or would we see this invasion as a unifying force in India against an attacking army?

Most of the 'British' soldiers fighting the Japanese were actully Indians anyway, and if you look and the Japanese conquests of European colonies in 1941/42 most of the defenders weren't from the colony they were defending, an invasion of India would involve the Japanes fighting against soldiers defending their own homes. I believe that more Indians would volunteer to fight and they would fight with a little more determination than was the case in Malaysia.

 

[Cryptic]

How would the Indians react? Would we see more revolts against Britain? Or would we see this invasion as a unifying force in India against an attacking army?

I think India (less pakistan and Bangladesh) has become a far more unified nation in the decades ater 1942 due to mass communication, travel, internal migration, standardized language usage etc.

Indian units would take a middle path. But... even a middle path would have a big impact on the British. Elite units, flagship batalions of famous regiments and even oridinary batalions with highly effective leadership would continue to fight well.

Average batalions, especially those that were newly raised and from areas not facing immediate Japanese occupation would suffer large scale desertions as men simply tried to go home. Some units would completly collapse, thus "infecting" other marginal units. Despite Japanese propaganda exhortations large scale desertions to the IJN with weapons would be rare, attacks on British personel non existant.

 

[hg42]

Indian units would take a middle path. But... even a middle path would have a big impact on the British. Elite units, flagship batalions of famous regiments and even oridinary batalions with highly effective leadership would continue to fight well.

Average batalions, especially those that were newly raised and from areas not facing immediate Japanese occupation would suffer large scale desertions as men simply tried to go home. Some units would completly collapse, thus "infecting" other marginal units. Despite Japanese propaganda exhortations large scale desertions to the IJN with weapons would be rare, attacks on British personel non existant.

Why? A collapse in morale presupposes some sort of large-scale public success against the Indian Army, which is not very likely given the conditions you're proposing; the deficiencies in language, communication, equipment and coordination that were revealed in 1941-42 aren't really properly fixed until 1943, but at the same time they're also survivable deficiencies once you get out of really close terrain; some aspects (motorisation, for example) become positive rather than negative factors once you break out into open country, which is what you're implying has happened.

Japan can probably acheive more success in a 'western' direction than she did, but July (for which read November-December, given the monsoons) is really too late for success on land outside those areas which were historically occupied and their analogues, and of course the 7th of June marks the end of any possibility of success at sea, which is going to make getting to those analogues an unholy terror. Sounds familiar...

 

[perfectgeneral]

The industrial base in China is a joke compared to mainland Japan, wich was very heavily industrialized, and prior to the B-29 raids, had a well built up infrastructure network.

If you want to talk about something like that, can a moderator please move this to the ASB forum.

Hyperbole, your argument about Industrial capacity is a good one, but the transition to the mainland would be more practical than Russia moving factories to Siberia. There is historical precedent for this and it requires no magical intervention. Japan is low on raw materials. Moving all or some of the factories (plus workers) to the mainland would save on shipping (fewer food imports too).

 

[hg42]

Hyperbole, your argument about Industrial capacity is a good one, but the transition to the mainland would be more practical than Russia moving factories to Siberia. There is historical precedent for this and it requires no magical intervention. Japan is low on raw materials. Moving all or some of the factories (plus workers) to the mainland would save on shipping (fewer food imports too).

Machine tools do not have the ability to teleport; production lines do not just wink out of existence one day and reappear, perfectly-formed, the next morning. Anything you decide to ship out from Japan to China (Why? Where do you get the shipping? How do you get the workers to move? How much gets sunk on the way? How long does it take the operators to rearrange their entire supply chain? How much gets blown up by the Chinese? Good grief...) is going to be offline for a long while - and Japan doesn't really have the time; they need every last bullet, shell and aircraft they can get their hands on, what with running an empire on an economic shoestring to begin with.

 

[mattep74]

Didnt Ghandi say something like choosing between UK and Japan was like choosing one colonizer with another. I guess he would negotiate with UK about independence and then tell the Indian people to resist Japan.

If Japan thought China was bad, they are in for a intresting time in India.

 

[Hyperion]

Hyperbole, your argument about Industrial capacity is a good one, but the transition to the mainland would be more practical than Russia moving factories to Siberia. There is historical precedent for this and it requires no magical intervention. Japan is low on raw materials. Moving all or some of the factories (plus workers) to the mainland would save on shipping (fewer food imports too).

Not really well thought out. The Russians moved production lines, but it took weeks or longer in some cases.

The Russians also had many more options for moving. Trains, cars, trucks, tractors, river traffic, aircraft for some items and personnel. The Russians had bicycles and if need be could move some stuff on foot if need be

To get whole factories from Japan to China or elsewhere would need shipping, and if possible every available large aircraft the Japanese could lay hands on.

You would essentially be tying up massive amounts of Japanese merchant shipping for months or longer to move their industrial base to the mainland. While they are doing that, they are not carrying troops and equipment to and from combat area, and they are not moving supplies to fleet bases like Truk and Rabaul.

This also assumes the US and token other Allied submarine forces are mentally retarded with down syndrome, and sit on their duffs the whole time and don't sink even one transport carrying equipment or personnel.

By late 1942 and into 1943, for all the problems US torpedoes had, some of the problems where starting to be fixed, and the US was starting to make up for bad torpedoes with more and more submarines being deployed to the Pacific, so the chances of blowing some of these transport ships out of the water and sending their cargo to the bottom of the Pacific is reasonably likely.

As someone who has studied logistics, as I'm sure you haven't, I have to say that idea is the stupidest thing I have ever heard of.