AHC: Japan attacks British & Dutch Territories
I don't know if there have been any T/Ls. about this:
But just wondering if Japan rejected Yamamoto's advice and went for the raw material rich areas of British and Dutch Territories?
Whilst, Churchill was reassured by FDR that they would be supported, and there were some liaisons between USN & RN - but what would it be in reality? Moreover, if the USN did get in harms way guns blazing - would FDR be 'under fire' politically for getting involved in a foreign war!?
Could the USN be obliged to 'get out of the way' to avoid any 'provocation'?
How long could Japan get a free run before the US decided enough was enough? And how much more territory could Japan have secured before then?
The Japanese could have secured Burma, Malaya, DEI, Papua, New Britain ans portions of the Gilberts before the US decided "enough was enough"
The operational situation for the Japanese is they can take all these western Pacific territories within just a few months (like OTL).
The US fleet based in Hawaii and the west coast is incapable of successfully intervening until 1943, well after the Japanese have been occupying the territories for months.
The US Asiatic fleet and USAFFE forces based within the Philippines lack the strength and range to affect Anglo-Japanese and Dutch-Japanese battles going on around them.
The British can make a long-term comeback but are not in any shape to try to reclaim territories until 1944, and they'd want US backing to really try.
Come June 1942 there's only two realistic outcomes:
a) Japan occupies it desired southern resources area and gets to fortify it at its own leisure, while being at war with Britain and the Commonwealth but not the United States. In its state of twilight/undeclared war, the US can be sending aid convoys on long-journeys to Australia and India (and the Philippines) , and occupying Pacific islands that Japan has not gotten to first (Fiji, New Caledonia, the Solomons-if lucky) but the Americans are not at liberty to invade Japanese held territories or bomb them.
The Americans can be shooting Japanese subs that venture too far south or east, or which go within 12 miles of the shores of Guam or the Philippines, on sight. But- the Japanese have no compelling reason to be sending subs those places. And if they do send subs there that end up getting attacked by the Americans, the Japanese, like the Germans in the Atlantic, only will acknowledge that fact if they believe it is in their interest.
b) The Americans between December 41 and June 1942 declare war on Japan and begin offensive operations, operations that their Asiatic and Pacific forces are too weak to carry out successfully. The Japanese occupy all the same British and Dutch territories as in option (a) but have also sunk any US Pacific task forces that tried to cross through the Japanese mandates, and destroyed any American forces based in the Philippines that have tried to intervene in the DEI. American/Filipino ground forces may be holding out longer, but US air operations and airfields in the Philippines are going to be completely neutralized within a few weeks of them initiating hostilities against the Japanese.
There is an option (c), but it is not realistic at all.
That would be the option where forces of the US Asiatic Fleet, or detachments from the US Pacific fleet, and US aircraft, travel to the DEI and Malaya and they help win battles that were lost in OTL.