AHC: Allies hold Burma

Too late for your TL I'm afraid, I double checked. However I was thinking of rebooting an old TL where the Allies win the Battle of the Java Sea and the USS Langley makes it to Java intact (both closer run things than often thought IMO).

Anyways those two things push the Japanese invasion of Java back 10 days and require a good number of the supplies destined for Burma in OTL. Furthermore, they give the Allies enough time to better organize a defense of Java which allows it to resist until the end of March.

The delay ALSO prevents the invasion of Lae in TTL as it's delayed after the Battle of the Java Sea keeping the Japanese invasion force in Rabaul harbour long enough for Brown's carrier aircraft to hit them in an inverse Pearl Harbour scenario. Thus throwing yet another wrench in the Japanese plans.

Anyways, the setbacks in the DEI/Rabaul delay the second phase of the Burma campaign two weeks. Considering what Alexander was able to pull off in OTL with the resources he had and the time that he had, I wager that with an additional two weeks, the Japanese advance North from Rangoon would have been halted well before the rest of Burma was taken. Wingate would have had plenty of time to make sure that the Japanese learned what the word "guerilla warfare" meant in TTL. In OTL he arrived but it was far too late to put any of his plans into action.

Kind of a roundabout way of proposing another scenario where Burma (or most of it) holds.

It's not really that hard of a challenge IMO given the logistics of the Imperial Japanese Army, the oncoming Monsoon season, and the defensive advantages inherent in Burma's terrain weaknesses of the Allied forces aside. In fact my ONLY criticism of CalBear's otherwise superlative Pacific War: Redux TL is his treatment of Burma, though I'm sure the Redux' redux will take care of that...:cool:

Everything your saying pretty much stands with my theory that holding Burma (or at least a good chunk of it) does not require significant pre-war PODs or radically different changes in the deployment and employment of Allied forces. Everything you just typed is really interesting.

For a more conventional scenario what about something along the lines of the minor command change you suggested (Burma not in ABDA), the 18th Division goes to Burma and not Singapore, and maybe a couple of more Hurricane squadrons, another squadron of Blenheims, and an additional squadron of Hudsons go to Burma instead of Singapore or the DEI. That's probably enough to hold down a good chunk of the colony before mid-May.
 
Vicious Cycle

Everything your saying pretty much stands with my theory that holding Burma (or at least a good chunk of it) does not require significant pre-war PODs or radically different changes in the deployment and employment of Allied forces. Everything you just typed is really interesting.

For a more conventional scenario what about something along the lines of the minor command change you suggested (Burma not in ABDA), the 18th Division goes to Burma and not Singapore, and maybe a couple of more Hurricane squadrons, another squadron of Blenheims, and an additional squadron of Hudsons go to Burma instead of Singapore or the DEI. That's probably enough to hold down a good chunk of the colony before mid-May.
Or a good way to lose even more troops in Burma.
If Malaya/Singapore go easier for the Japanese, they have more troops to rush to other theatres.
And every time confused, bewildered, poorly (or even adequately) led British troops lose in Southeast Asia, it damages British morale and builds/reinforces a myth that it's practically impossible for British troops to fight Japanese ones in jungles, which in turn leads to even more and ever bigger British defeats down the road.
Things got to the point in the original timeline where - according to Churchill's memoirs* - Mountbatten, in 1943, insisted it would be necessary to use 50,000 men - of whom 33,700 would be combatants - against an estimated 5,000 Japanese in any attempt to retake the Andaman Islands. :(

* See: The Second World War, Volume 5, pages 364-365. (1952 edition)
 
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Or a good way to lose even more troops in Burma.
If Malaya/Singapore go easier for the Japanese, they have more troops to rush to other theatres.
And every time confused, bewildered, poorly (or even adequately) led British troops lose in Southeast Asia, it damages British morale and builds/reinforces a myth that it's practically impossible for British troops to fight Japanese ones in jungles, which in turn leads to even more and ever bigger British defeats down the road.
Things got to the point in the original timeline where - according to Churchill's memoirs* - Mountbatten, in 1943, insisted it would be necessary to use 50,000 men - of whom 33,700 would be combatants - against an estimated 5,000 Japanese in any attempt to retake the Andaman Islands. :(

* See: The Second World War, Volume 5, pages 364-365. (1952 edition)

I guess that's the potential downside but given what happened OTL I can't imagine it being much worse for morale...
 
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