Agree or disagree with this piece: Five ways Japan could have won World War II

Geon

Donor
I guess it also comes down to defining what it would mean for Japan (or for that matter Germany) to "win."

As long as they held the Philippines, Guam, and Wake Island there would be no negotiations with the U.S. Ditto for any other nation who lost possessions.

A while ago I had a conversation on another thread here with someone who asked whether or not the U.S. would have agreed to negotiate if it lost at Midway. I reminded that person as others on this board did that at no time other then 9/11 was the U.S. so infuriated as it was after Pearl Harbor. The general attitude was one of total fury against the Japanese. I cannot see the U.S. accepting anything short of total victory. Any politician suggesting anything short of that would be fortunate if he wasn't at the very least suspected of sedition!
 
Victory disease might account for the decision to attack the islands, but the real issue was their codes not being secure. Information security is a common issue in war, and likely would have caught the Japanese carriers at some stage.

Assuming the Pacific fleet is not lost a pearl harbour my feeling is that War Plan Orange is heavily modified. The logical approach is to take advantage of access to the Dutch and British waters and land based airfields in the DEI and Malaya. In this case the Allies may have better reconaissance and definitely radar. The combined allied fleet might include several British carriers and additional battleships. I think this illustrates why attacking Pearl Harbour made some sense.

Also bear in mind the US could have committed the carriers, Yorktown, Saratoga, Enterprise, Wasp, Hornet and Lexington. Backed up a British carrier or two and considering the US carriers had more capacity and typically carried more fighter planes I think Japan feared it might not have the advantage despite their high quality planes and pilots.

More to the point - even setting aside their poor intelligence security - I am not sure how much superiority I want to concede to the Japanese at sea, at least as regards their naval air arm. By the spring of 1942, the US carrier forces were pretty good by the standards of the day (though not nearly as good as they would become by war's end). Their dive bombers were almost certainly better; their torpedo bombers, worse; the F4F not as good as the A6M, but the pilots and tactics of the Americans mostly cancelled it out. The U.S. also had begun using radar, whereas the Japanese had none as yet. And of course US carriers had better damage control, a point which saved them more than once.

The U.S. Navy was from the outset a pretty good match for the IJN in terms of carrier warfare; after the Solomons, of course, that was no longer the case.
 
I guess it also comes down to defining what it would mean for Japan (or for that matter Germany) to "win."

As long as they held the Philippines, Guam, and Wake Island there would be no negotiations with the U.S. Ditto for any other nation who lost possessions.

A while ago I had a conversation on another thread here with someone who asked whether or not the U.S. would have agreed to negotiate if it lost at Midway. I reminded that person as others on this board did that at no time other then 9/11 was the U.S. so infuriated as it was after Pearl Harbor. The general attitude was one of total fury against the Japanese. I cannot see the U.S. accepting anything short of total victory. Any politician suggesting anything short of that would be fortunate if he wasn't at the very least suspected of sedition!

I agree.

The Japanese clearly underestimated American (and British) public will, no question.

There is a chance...a very outside one...let us say the Germans somehow (a la Calbear's timeline) defeat the Soviets, and occupy everything up to the Urals or so, inflicting a severe peace on the Soviet rump state(s). Now the Anglo-Americans face a Nazi-held Europe they cannot invade for the foreseeable future. It is...not utterly impossible that they might try to reach a deal with Imperial Japan under the right circumstances, so that they can be freed to face the Germans.

Of course, it is much more likely that the WAllies stand on the defensive in Europe, and work to smash Japan even more quickly.

It really is hard to see how Japan can win any war with the US and Britain at any point in the 20th century.
 
Assuming the Japanese begin seriously fortifying their islands as soon as they pull out of the WNT in 1936, they can certainly make things more difficult for the USA. Of course, any efforts with personnel, equipment, steel/concrete, and so forth that goes in to doing this 1936-1941 has to come from somewhere. Japan does not have lots of spares in heavy equipment, engineering personnel and so forth that can be diverted from this at this point in time. Simply buying more steel, cement, heavy equipment is not an option because Japan is in a bad way for foreign exchange. Their trade balance sucks, their exports are not expanding during the depression and are limited even in the best of economic times. Not to say that using picks and shovels, logs, sandbags, and the like they can't do a lot better.

If the march across the Pacific is delayed, in spite of crappy flying conditions, B-29s can hit northern Japan. Very not optimal but it can happen. Also, I expect you'll see more bypassing of islands with more places being left to starve, and also places being seriously hit by carrier and land based air to neutralize them. If you take Guam back and trash Saipan and Tinian so that they have no functioning air capacity, then you can avoid costly assaults. Taking back islands the Japanese seized after PH will much cheaper than fortress islands. Land based air operating from Guam can make sure the rest of the Marianas soon lose air capacity, and the navy will be able to make sure that replacement aircraft and fuel can't be sent in.

The Japanese will not be able to completely conceal the fact that they are fortifying their mandates to a fare thee well and this will mean the USA will react in kind, and the British and the Empire forces will probably do more south of the equator. Every additional day of delay in taking the islands the Japanese took, every extra dead or wounded soldier, and every extra lost bit of gear over and above what they lost OTL will hurt bug time.
 
Assuming the Japanese begin seriously fortifying their islands as soon as they pull out of the WNT in 1936, they can certainly make things more difficult for the USA. Of course, any efforts with personnel, equipment, steel/concrete, and so forth that goes in to doing this 1936-1941 has to come from somewhere. Japan does not have lots of spares in heavy equipment, engineering personnel and so forth that can be diverted from this at this point in time. Simply buying more steel, cement, heavy equipment is not an option because Japan is in a bad way for foreign exchange. Their trade balance sucks, their exports are not expanding during the depression and are limited even in the best of economic times. Not to say that using picks and shovels, logs, sandbags, and the like they can't do a lot better.

If the march across the Pacific is delayed, in spite of crappy flying conditions, B-29s can hit northern Japan. Very not optimal but it can happen. Also, I expect you'll see more bypassing of islands with more places being left to starve, and also places being seriously hit by carrier and land based air to neutralize them. If you take Guam back and trash Saipan and Tinian so that they have no functioning air capacity, then you can avoid costly assaults. Taking back islands the Japanese seized after PH will much cheaper than fortress islands. Land based air operating from Guam can make sure the rest of the Marianas soon lose air capacity, and the navy will be able to make sure that replacement aircraft and fuel can't be sent in.

The Japanese will not be able to completely conceal the fact that they are fortifying their mandates to a fare thee well and this will mean the USA will react in kind, and the British and the Empire forces will probably do more south of the equator. Every additional day of delay in taking the islands the Japanese took, every extra dead or wounded soldier, and every extra lost bit of gear over and above what they lost OTL will hurt bug time.

1. You're right: Resources are at premium for the Japanese, and their war economy was already running full tilt. They would probably have to prioritize only the most important islands, and even points on certain islands. I think I'd start with Saipan, and work down from there.

Yet even a very modest fortification budget on several years lead time could yield formidable results.

Come to that, even fortifications that only begin in earnest in 1942 would still make (say) the Marianas a good deal tougher to crack.

2. Actually, American and British intelligence on Japanese forces on the Mandates was rather poor. Both were keen to avoid obvious acts of provocation. And Japan severely restricted even basic trade and travel to and from the islands.

The Marianas would be a little more challenging to keep sub rosa, because of Guam's close proximity.

Again, though: Japan can't fortify them enough to win a war with the U.S., even on a limited negotiation basis. All they can do is drag it out a little more. But if your entire strategy is to seize a defensible perimeter that you hope to make too expensive and difficult for the U.S. to conquer, it behooves you to actually do something to make it more defensible. Decisive Battle or not.
 
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Thomas1195

Banned
I would encourage you to read more on the subject, I think you would be surprised at the diversity of aircraft used by the RN, it might change your views.
Well, the problem is that at least until 1942 lots of them were still biplanes. Fighters like Seafire were good interceptors but never good at escorting naval bombers. You are not going to use biplanes against IJN airforce. But maybe they could rely on American aircraft.
 
Well, the problem is that at least until 1942 lots of them were still biplanes. Fighters like Seafire were good interceptors but never good at escorting naval bombers. You are not going to use biplanes against IJN airforce. But maybe they could rely on American aircraft.

Biplanes of that era were significantly more reliable in the sea conditions of the North sea or Atlantic, and well suited to anti-submarine work or scouting. If memory serves the US and Japan both modernised their carrier aircraft signficantly in 1940 and 41, which makes the initial British choice of aircraft in line with their peers.

As with their peer group they saw the need to modernise, and the RN started with the Sea Hurricane in 1941 and also ordered US fighters - reflecting the advantage of the UK having friends in the world.

The Japanese fleet peaked in its technological and size advantages in late 1941, in the absence of WW2 a pure UK/Japan war there would have been problems for Japan at almost any other date, the RN would have modernised or Japan would have been in the same technological situation only without radar.

Given the number of high spec aircraft produced in the UK it hardly seems reasonable to assume that a serious carrier aircraft could not have been developed if the American versions had not existed.
 
Well, the problem is that at least until 1942 lots of them were still biplanes. Fighters like Seafire were good interceptors but never good at escorting naval bombers. You are not going to use biplanes against IJN airforce. But maybe they could rely on American aircraft.

Carrier aircraft weren't that relevant to the war fought by the British in south-east Asia anyway. It was a land war in Malaya, Burma and India, supported by land-based air. What use were carrier aircraft at Imphal and Kohima?
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
Well, the problem is that at least until 1942 lots of them were still biplanes. Fighters like Seafire were good interceptors but never good at escorting naval bombers. You are not going to use biplanes against IJN airforce. But maybe they could rely on American aircraft.
The FAA, much like the USN, was caught between generations in the early years of the Pacific War (something that rapidly became the lot of the IJN by the end of 1942). The FAA tended to use USN designs for the most basic of reasons, the British aircraft industry was concentrating on the ETO. Interestingly, the January 1943 introduced Fairey Barracuda used the RR Merlin, but due to the availability of the U.S. TBF never received an upgrade from its original, and inadequate (for Pacific use), Mark 32 low altitude version. The aircraft suffered from that decision for its entire operational life.

The same can be said for the RN use of USN fighters like the F4F and F4U (an aircraft that the RN managed to deck qualify well ahead of the USN).

In a scenario where the RN has to fight the IJN without the USN, which, as noted earlier, would not have taken place before the defeat of the Reich, likely by the Red Army rolling all the way to the Rhine, the RN will have some extremely solid, if not superb, designs available, including the glorious Sea Fury and the Fairey Spearfish.
 
The best Japan can hope for is an armistice,and that's going to involve Germany doing much better and the Allies having to let Japan go to deal with the more serious threat.
 
You are the most precious of trolls, aren't you?
Thank you very much!:) That's the best compliment that I have received in years! According to Bling the definition of precious is...

of great value; not to be wasted or treated carelessly

You have performed wonders for my self-confidence! Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you!
 
Honestly, it really depends on how much Americans genuinely care about the Philippines. From what I've gathered the Philippines were seen as a rather disastrous money sink, and most Americans felt no real fraternity with Filipinos, nor vice versa. Japan could not really defeat the US in a war, but trying to shift the opinion towards Japan to the nation being the USA's "little buddy" that will always be America's friend, and thus it would not have to defeat the US.
 
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