Really underlines how they were betting the stack on a short war.
Really underlines how they were betting the stack on a short war.
They had too - leave it another 12 months and the British Empires war machine would be fully ramped up and the USAs (already very impressive by the end of 1942) not far from reaching its full potential.
It was the point of maximum vulnerability for the Allies as far as Japan was concerned.
June 1950 the Yellow Sea.
The British Light Fleet Carrier HMS Triumph launches a strike of the new De Havilland Sea Venom against North Korean Forces attacking Seoul.
The British Light Fleet Carrier HMS Triumph launches a strike of the new De Havilland Sea Venom against North Korean Forces attacking Seoul.
June 1952
HMS Centaur relieves HMAS Sydney during the Korean War. It's her first post commissioning cruise and she carries a squadron of the new Hawker P.1052 Sea Hawk II
HMS Centaur relieves HMAS Sydney during the Korean War. It's her first post commissioning cruise and she carries a squadron of the new Hawker P.1052 Sea Hawk II
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Hiyo-class aircraft carrier (commissioned 1941)
Imperial Japanese Navy
Ships: Hiyo, Junyo
Part Two
By March 1942, Japan had secured most of her strategic goals in the Pacific. Singapore, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaya, the Marianas, Wake Island... the list went on. Only the Philippines still held out, and it was clear that even they would not last long. Faced with this, the Japanese decided - unwisely but boldly, as it would turn out - to extend their defensive perimeter.
Japan's eyes now turned south-east, towards the Solomon Islands and New Guinea, and in particular the town of Port Moresby, which could serve as a useful staging point for further operations near Fiji and Samoa, and as a powerful airbase to interdict Allied traffic in the Coral Sea. Taking Port Moresby now became a priority on the Japanese list. It was now that the large number of operational fleet carriers in the IJN began to pay dividends. Originally, Admiral Yamamoto had considered sending all eight of the Kido Butai's fleet carriers into the Indian Ocean to find and destroy the Royal Navy's Eastern Fleet. However, in early March, he changed his ideas, and instead detached Carrier Division 6 to prepare for a seizure of Port Moresby in April, in an operation codenamed MO.
Kakuta's ships were chosen for the mission as they were possibly the least useful carriers in the strike force, being only 28-knot ships and carrying small air groups. Besides, they were not as experienced as, say, the queens in CarDiv 1, and so, if they were lost - but they would not be, of course - they could be spared more easily.
While Nagumo's six other flattops charged into the Bay of Bengal and sowed havoc through the first week of April, Hiyo and Junyo relocated to Truk to rest, conduct a short refit, and prepare for the operation. MO would finally get underway in late April. Unfortunately for the IJN, on 18th April, Vice Admiral William 'Bull' Halsey raided the Home Islands. TF 16, built around USS Enterprise, the survivor of Pearl, escorted TF 18, built around Hornet and Constellation, to a launch point hundreds of miles off Japan. There, watched over by their veteran older sister, the two apple green ships launched nearly three dozen B-25 Mitchell medium bombers towards Tokyo. The damage done was minor, but the mood in Japan was soured. Destroying the American carriers became a priority in Yamamoto's mind.
MO would, unintentionally, provide an opportunity for this. Lexington's TF 11 and Yorktown's TF 17 were waiting in the Coral Sea when the Japanese came. Over a multi-day battle, the two Japanese and two American fleet carriers would duel in the first carrier battle in history. Their solid battleship hulls providing a good measure of durability, Hiyo and Junyo would survive, albeit with heavy damage to Hiyo especially and severe airgroup attrition for both ships. In return, they would send Yorktown to the bottom, and maul Lexington with bombs and torpedoes. Nevertheless, Admiral Fletcher managed to thwart Kakuta's advance on Port Moresby, and save the town.
Carrier Division 6 would be unable to operate as a combat unit until August at the latest, and so they would not be able to sail with the Kido Butai when they set off for a small island in the Central Pacific to fight the much-desired Decisive Battle. It would be a mixed blessing.
Waiting for Nagumo's six fleet carriers at Midway were Enterprise, Hornet, Constellation - and, near miraculously, the still badly damaged Lexington, who had been sent to the battlefield a day after her peers thanks to Nimitz's insistence and Pearl Harbor's incredible dockworkers. On June 4th, they clashed in a titanic combined arms battle off the atoll. When the smoke settled, Lexington had succumbed to her wounds and gone to the bottom of the Pacific, and Hornet along with her. However, they would take Soryu, Hiryu and Akagi to the bottom, and bang up the Kaga and Shokaku. After a botched attempt to capture the atoll, Yamamoto returned to lick his wounds.
The battle left the US Pacific Fleet with Enterprise, Constellation, Saratoga and Wasp, while the IJN had Kaga, Shokaku, Zuikaku, Hiyo and Junyo. The Japanese offensives had been stopped at Midway. However, the odds were still not favourable. Nimitz found himself at a loss regarding what to do.
Imperial Japanese Navy
Ships: Hiyo, Junyo
Part Two
By March 1942, Japan had secured most of her strategic goals in the Pacific. Singapore, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaya, the Marianas, Wake Island... the list went on. Only the Philippines still held out, and it was clear that even they would not last long. Faced with this, the Japanese decided - unwisely but boldly, as it would turn out - to extend their defensive perimeter.
Japan's eyes now turned south-east, towards the Solomon Islands and New Guinea, and in particular the town of Port Moresby, which could serve as a useful staging point for further operations near Fiji and Samoa, and as a powerful airbase to interdict Allied traffic in the Coral Sea. Taking Port Moresby now became a priority on the Japanese list. It was now that the large number of operational fleet carriers in the IJN began to pay dividends. Originally, Admiral Yamamoto had considered sending all eight of the Kido Butai's fleet carriers into the Indian Ocean to find and destroy the Royal Navy's Eastern Fleet. However, in early March, he changed his ideas, and instead detached Carrier Division 6 to prepare for a seizure of Port Moresby in April, in an operation codenamed MO.
Kakuta's ships were chosen for the mission as they were possibly the least useful carriers in the strike force, being only 28-knot ships and carrying small air groups. Besides, they were not as experienced as, say, the queens in CarDiv 1, and so, if they were lost - but they would not be, of course - they could be spared more easily.
While Nagumo's six other flattops charged into the Bay of Bengal and sowed havoc through the first week of April, Hiyo and Junyo relocated to Truk to rest, conduct a short refit, and prepare for the operation. MO would finally get underway in late April. Unfortunately for the IJN, on 18th April, Vice Admiral William 'Bull' Halsey raided the Home Islands. TF 16, built around USS Enterprise, the survivor of Pearl, escorted TF 18, built around Hornet and Constellation, to a launch point hundreds of miles off Japan. There, watched over by their veteran older sister, the two apple green ships launched nearly three dozen B-25 Mitchell medium bombers towards Tokyo. The damage done was minor, but the mood in Japan was soured. Destroying the American carriers became a priority in Yamamoto's mind.
MO would, unintentionally, provide an opportunity for this. Lexington's TF 11 and Yorktown's TF 17 were waiting in the Coral Sea when the Japanese came. Over a multi-day battle, the two Japanese and two American fleet carriers would duel in the first carrier battle in history. Their solid battleship hulls providing a good measure of durability, Hiyo and Junyo would survive, albeit with heavy damage to Hiyo especially and severe airgroup attrition for both ships. In return, they would send Yorktown to the bottom, and maul Lexington with bombs and torpedoes. Nevertheless, Admiral Fletcher managed to thwart Kakuta's advance on Port Moresby, and save the town.
Carrier Division 6 would be unable to operate as a combat unit until August at the latest, and so they would not be able to sail with the Kido Butai when they set off for a small island in the Central Pacific to fight the much-desired Decisive Battle. It would be a mixed blessing.
Waiting for Nagumo's six fleet carriers at Midway were Enterprise, Hornet, Constellation - and, near miraculously, the still badly damaged Lexington, who had been sent to the battlefield a day after her peers thanks to Nimitz's insistence and Pearl Harbor's incredible dockworkers. On June 4th, they clashed in a titanic combined arms battle off the atoll. When the smoke settled, Lexington had succumbed to her wounds and gone to the bottom of the Pacific, and Hornet along with her. However, they would take Soryu, Hiryu and Akagi to the bottom, and bang up the Kaga and Shokaku. After a botched attempt to capture the atoll, Yamamoto returned to lick his wounds.
The battle left the US Pacific Fleet with Enterprise, Constellation, Saratoga and Wasp, while the IJN had Kaga, Shokaku, Zuikaku, Hiyo and Junyo. The Japanese offensives had been stopped at Midway. However, the odds were still not favourable. Nimitz found himself at a loss regarding what to do.
It is interesting to contemplate this scenario, because on the one hand one can immediately grasp the strategic and tactical advantages of the IJN having a pair of battleship carrier conversions like these (even if they are more limited than their erstwhile contemporaries, the Shokakus), you can also see how Yamamoto has managed to fritter away a lot of the advantage they offer. But this is also quite plausible, because it's roughly the same course he followed in OTL. Because Yamamoto really was *not* -- unlike Genda or Yamaguchi or Ozawa -- a naval air power guy, but a black shoe admiral. And because he was so often too clever for his own good (and too clever for the actual capabilities of his fleet).
In the larger picture, of course, it may not matter all that much, because he still initiates the one course which would throw away the one necessary premise for the kind of war Japan needed to fight to have any chance of success, to wit: a war in which America enters with little public willpower to win. But Pearl Harbor, whether conducted with 6 carriers or 8 or even just 3, ensured the war would only end once Japan was ground to powder.
Yamamoto still has something he did not after the Midway of our timeline: the strategic initiative. Thanks to the extra carrier division (but no thanks to his baroque planning), he still has more carriers than Nimitz has, and Nimitz knows it. And yet, it seems probable he will find a way to fail to profitably use this advantage to attain any strategic objective for the balance of 1942. Which dooms Japan more or less on schedule, because any 1942 like this sees the US Navy erasing the Japanese's qualitative advantage, and 1943 necessarily erases any quantitative advantage -- or even parity.
June 2021
HMS Queen Elizabeth begins her first operational deployment.
HMS Queen Elizabeth begins her first operational deployment.
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I thought they didn't have angled flight decks or is this a fictional version?
They don't. But they do have jump ramps.
This is obviously an "alternative" 21st century HMS Queen Elizabeth.
1897 Spithead England.
Irish nationalists attack the gathering ships for the Jubilee Naval Review the night before it takes place. Two Battleships are damaged and a German cruiser attacked by mistake is sunk. The backlash is considerable both in the UK and Germany. The 6 surviving attackers go to gallows 2 months later.
Irish nationalists attack the gathering ships for the Jubilee Naval Review the night before it takes place. Two Battleships are damaged and a German cruiser attacked by mistake is sunk. The backlash is considerable both in the UK and Germany. The 6 surviving attackers go to gallows 2 months later.
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1865
The Confederate Commerce Raider CSS Shenandoah is interned in the Kingdom of Hawaii following the end of the American Civil War and later commissioned into that country's infant navy. Still in service when the native royal family is overthrown by American interests she runs to New Zealand carrying the Queen into exile and is again interned and later used to take troops to South Africa during the 2nd Anglo Boer War.
The Confederate Commerce Raider CSS Shenandoah is interned in the Kingdom of Hawaii following the end of the American Civil War and later commissioned into that country's infant navy. Still in service when the native royal family is overthrown by American interests she runs to New Zealand carrying the Queen into exile and is again interned and later used to take troops to South Africa during the 2nd Anglo Boer War.
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Very nice cats and traps I take it being as there looks to be a Hawkey on the deck
June `1982 Portsmouth England
The old carrier HMS Bulwark sails to join the new carrier HMS Illustrious to relieve the task force around the Falkland Islands following the end of the Falklands War. Only decommissioned in February she was in reasonable condition but it had not been possible to assemble a crew in time to join the first task force. (No fires happened after she was recommissioned in 1979). Sold to Brazil in 1987 she would serve on until replaced by the former HMS Invincible.
The old carrier HMS Bulwark sails to join the new carrier HMS Illustrious to relieve the task force around the Falkland Islands following the end of the Falklands War. Only decommissioned in February she was in reasonable condition but it had not been possible to assemble a crew in time to join the first task force. (No fires happened after she was recommissioned in 1979). Sold to Brazil in 1987 she would serve on until replaced by the former HMS Invincible.
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This is a pretty interesting idea but as others have said the Ise's and Fuso's would have been better candidates. Plus the IJN gun club would have been unwilling to sacrifice the Nagato's because of those 16 inch guns.
The biggest problem I have with this timeline, and it's very nitpicky, is the renaming of Nagato and Mutsu. Plenty of warships underwent conversion and yet all retained their original names such as HMS Furious, Kaga, and USS Saratoga to name a few. I see no reason for the IJN to rename the pair because of the conversion.
This is the first time I am trying to put together a brief story so any and all constructive criticism is more than welcomed.
This is an attempt at writing a plausible background of Japan building battleships/battlecruisers within the interwar treaty system before going straight to the Yamato class. To achive this I will use the First London Naval Treaty as the POD in my scenario's. A further limit within the POD will be to limit the construction, due to cost, that Japan can build using the 3-3-2 ratio used at the WNT for post-Jutland ships. Finally, most of these designs are based on real designs considered for either a treay battleship or as a preliminary design for the Yamato's
Limitations
The first limitation is monetary. Where exactly is Japan going to get this money to build a pair of battleships? This is an essential question as the government already spent around a quarter of its budget on the IJN during this period. Since these aren't part of a fully flushed out timeline I will ignore this import limitation for now. If this is really bothering readers then the money will come from not modernizing the Ise's and Fuso's since they were subpar battleships.
The next limitation is dockyard space. Again, I will for the most part ignore this issue and would sacrifice the rebuilding of the Ise's and Fuso's to build new battleships.
Displacement
The IJN is known for building ships over the tonnage restrictions in the region of 10-20% or greater. Looking at some of the ideas for a treaty battleship I have no doubt that any treaty battleship built would be over the tonnage limits. As a guide a battleship 20% greater then 30,000 tons would be 36,000 ton and a battleship 20% over 35,000 tons would be 42,000 tons.
Pictures and drawings
I will use pictures and drawings from around the internet to represent each of my idea's. There WILL be differences between the what I write and any images. Any images used should be considered as a preliminary design for what I describe in text. Also I have not springsharped these ships so readers are more then welcome to try.
I will write three slighly different scenario's based on the following hypotheticals in order
1) A 30,000 ton battleship with 14 inch gun
2) A 35,000 ton battleship with 16 inch guns
3) A 35,000 ton battleship with 14 inch guns.
Please ask if further clarification is required. Thanks and I will try and have the first scenario out soon.
This is an attempt at writing a plausible background of Japan building battleships/battlecruisers within the interwar treaty system before going straight to the Yamato class. To achive this I will use the First London Naval Treaty as the POD in my scenario's. A further limit within the POD will be to limit the construction, due to cost, that Japan can build using the 3-3-2 ratio used at the WNT for post-Jutland ships. Finally, most of these designs are based on real designs considered for either a treay battleship or as a preliminary design for the Yamato's
Limitations
The first limitation is monetary. Where exactly is Japan going to get this money to build a pair of battleships? This is an essential question as the government already spent around a quarter of its budget on the IJN during this period. Since these aren't part of a fully flushed out timeline I will ignore this import limitation for now. If this is really bothering readers then the money will come from not modernizing the Ise's and Fuso's since they were subpar battleships.
The next limitation is dockyard space. Again, I will for the most part ignore this issue and would sacrifice the rebuilding of the Ise's and Fuso's to build new battleships.
Displacement
The IJN is known for building ships over the tonnage restrictions in the region of 10-20% or greater. Looking at some of the ideas for a treaty battleship I have no doubt that any treaty battleship built would be over the tonnage limits. As a guide a battleship 20% greater then 30,000 tons would be 36,000 ton and a battleship 20% over 35,000 tons would be 42,000 tons.
Pictures and drawings
I will use pictures and drawings from around the internet to represent each of my idea's. There WILL be differences between the what I write and any images. Any images used should be considered as a preliminary design for what I describe in text. Also I have not springsharped these ships so readers are more then welcome to try.
I will write three slighly different scenario's based on the following hypotheticals in order
1) A 30,000 ton battleship with 14 inch gun
2) A 35,000 ton battleship with 16 inch guns
3) A 35,000 ton battleship with 14 inch guns.
Please ask if further clarification is required. Thanks and I will try and have the first scenario out soon.
It's a good point -- I was just so busy on the substance of the timeline that I thought I'd let it pass. But IJN practice was certainly to keep the names on conversions.
RamscoopRaider
Donor
Uh no the IJN did both. Taigei became Ryuuho upon conversion, Tsurugizaki became Shouhou, and Takasaki became Zuiho. Kaga, Akagi, Shinano, Chiyoda and Chitose kept their names on conversion
They renamed the submarine tenders and passenger liners and kept the old name in all others.
The convention for major warships (especially battleships/battlecruisers as can be seen in irl history) was clearly to keep the name.