Combined Fleet destroys USN at Midway? Effects?

Realistically, though, it is hard to see King and Nimitz deciding to do WATCHTOWER if they just got kicked at Midway.

Much more likely that they continue the buildup on the key islands in the SE Pacific, and keep the surviving carriers to at least pose a threat of a fleet in being. I do think you may be onto something with both VICTOROUS and FORMIDABLE being sent out as temporary reinforcement.
Jusr because the PTO is stalemated doesn't mean the MTO or ETO has to stay idle to match. ETO doesn't really need Carriers anyway, that Airstrip One's Job.

Just landingcraft and the rest that arent being used in the PTO can be used in MTO or ETO, like Sledgehammer in August/September in place of Torch. There isn't an Atlantic Wall in '42, except in Calais and the Channel Islands
 
In fact there was a whole US ID in Fiji in May 1942 at the time of the Coral Sea.

Actually, the 37th Division did not arrive until June.

What was there until that point was 10,000 New Zealand regulars (8th Brigade, 14th Brigade, some other units). Which should be enough to fill any Axis commander's heart with dismay. This doesn't really improve Japan's odds. Fiji was going to be an extraordinarily tough nut to crack at any point in 1942.

Otherwise, great post, good points.
 
Jusr because the PTO is stalemated doesn't mean the MTO or ETO has to stay idle to match. ETO doesn't really need Carriers anyway, that Airstrip One's Job.

Just landingcraft and the rest that arent being used in the PTO can be used in MTO or ETO, like Sledgehammer in August/September in place of Torch. There isn't an Atlantic Wall in '42, except in Calais and the Channel Islands

I think they'd only do SLEDGEHAMMER if there was clear evidence of an imminent Soviet collapse, because they well knew that any pocket they established in NW France couldn't bbe sustained long-term against the kind of forces the Wehrmacht could hurl against it. But otherwise, valid points.
 
Fraser's government in New Zealand had concluded that an invasion of 20,000 could take the islands while their Expeditionary Force of 30,000 was still largely in Europe and North Africa with Australia in a similar debate.

Kinda skipped past this until I read @nbcman's post.

Having previously lived in New Zealand and spent inordinate amounts of time with old WW2 vets, I'd like to say that I am not sure 20,000 Japanese troops could take and hold downtown Auckland in 1942, let alone the rest of the country.

Even with most of the regular NZ army off in Egypt, there are still parts of the 3rd Division, and there are 100,000 men were armed for Home Guard duty, and still hundreds of thousands of old ANZAC vets, now in their 40's, most of 'em living in fairly rural areas, many with at least a rifle or shotgun. Trying to clear and hold a country the size of California with that kind of terrain, with those old buzzards still at large, is not an enviable task in the least. Friedrich von Mellenthin observed that the Kiwis were the toughest Allied troops he had ever faced, and knew of no German or Italian officers with similar experience who disagreed with that assessment: They had all the raw aggression of the Aussies, but with greater discipline.

I'd be curious to look up what Fraser said exactly. But I suspect that if he did say it like this, it was an exercise in scare-mongering for domestic consumption.
 
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Geon

Donor
What they *would* do is Operation FS, as soon they could replenish air groups and assemble the forces. Presumably in August-September. They might have success with Espiritu Santo and Efate, but overall the op would be a bloody failure for them. They'd lose ships, not just soldiers, especially if Nimitz sends Sara and Wasp down there to ride their flanks.

What they *should* do, I think, is go all in on Port Moresby, as quickly as possible. Finish the airfield at Guadalcanal. Mount a few raids to keep the Yanks on their toes. And then fortify the hell out of all their key islands. Dig, dig, dig.

There really is not much else they can do now. They're pretty much at their limit.

If Operation FS goes ahead, to follow this line of thinking, does the Japanese try for another Midway type victory? It knows the U.S. is going to try to stop it and its intelligence probably knows that Saratoga and Wasp are in the Pacific now. Does it go ahead with another Combined Fleet Operation like Midway with the hope of destroying most of the remaining American naval/air capability in the Pacific for the foreseeable future.

I could see Yamamoto doing this. The warlords in Japan hoped Pearl Harbor would force the U.S. to the peace table but now after two major naval disasters the U.S. is still coming on strong. They might hope all it takes is one more major defeat to force the U.S. to consider peace talks.

P.S. My dad served in WWII. God bless you sir! Thank you and all those who made it home...and those who did not.
 
If Operation FS goes ahead, to follow this line of thinking, does the Japanese try for another Midway type victory? It knows the U.S. is going to try to stop it and its intelligence probably knows that Saratoga and Wasp are in the Pacific now. Does it go ahead with another Combined Fleet Operation like Midway with the hope of destroying most of the remaining American naval/air capability in the Pacific for the foreseeable future.

I could see Yamamoto doing this. The warlords in Japan hoped Pearl Harbor would force the U.S. to the peace table but now after two major naval disasters the U.S. is still coming on strong. They might hope all it takes is one more major defeat to force the U.S. to consider peace talks.

P.S. My dad served in WWII. God bless you sir! Thank you and all those who made it home...and those who did not.

It's interesting in that the circumstances would be similar on paper: the IJN hoping that Nimitz, desperate to counter the Japanese, could hurl in the only two carriers he had to hand, hoping to roll sixes. If Nimitz doesn't show up, then, well, the Japanese would at least get some real estate and nice headlines out of it.

Here, however, Nimitz is literally down to the last two carriers the US Navy has (Ranger excluded), and would King allow him to run such a risk? What would the Japanese expect?

More likely, the victory disease would be intense by this point; they'd won at every battle (even Coral Sea would be read through this light), and they might think, "does it matter, anyway?" They'd go for the real estate, thinking the USN would be too weak to try to show up, but even if they did, they could handle whatever did cruise into the neighborhood. I presume that after this Midway, Yamamoto would send Nagumo south with four carriers - Shokaku and Zuikaku (Cardiv 5) would be ready by August, and he would pick whichever remaining Cardiv had the least crew and aircraft losses to replace after Midway, and leave the other Cardiv back home to take its time replacing them. Some on his staff would urge waiting until they could maximize their carrier force given intel reports (by submarine) of the buildup in Fiji and Efate, but he might just go ahead anyway, being in a rush, knowing the clock was ticking, and take along Ryujo for shore support instead. I'd bet 60/40 on that right now.

The question at that point is whether Nimitz would decide to go all in at Espiritu Santo and send the 1st Marine Division and all available aircraft there in July, or write it off and try to run Nagumo through the meatgrinder down at New Cal or Fiji. I suspect he'd do the former - and if he does, the South Seas Force gets turned into hamburger trying to take it (not that Nimitz would know this, since he did not know for sure the size of the SSF) - but I would have to look into it some more.

P.S. My grandad served as a paratrooper in the Aleutians and Krueger's 6th Army in the Philippines. Got shot in the hand by a sniper on Luzon. I salute your dad today, sir.
 
Saratoga left PH and was sailing towards Midway on 6 June. Not exactly a long distance and she was fully covered by US land based air.

About 1300 miles with hostile forces in the area. Not the shortest of distances.

The IJN would have had naval superiority in the immediate aftermath of this Alt-Midway.

Agreed.

But the IJN neither had ability to keep those ships on station at Midway nor had the means to take Midway when the invading force was smaller than the defending force.

They have carrier-based bombing capacity and naval superiority as well as the ability to interdict supplies. If the US Navy is decimated at Midway the already-hammered forces now largely lack air support, their fuel stocks are also not unlimited, and what aircraft remain are not our best at the time.


You might want to read about New Zealand's assessment of Fiji around the time of Midway.

I've already responded to this assertion that IJ would make any type of a peace offer that could be accepted by AUS & NZ.

The UK had already come to Japan with a proposal to recognize Northern China and Manchuria as Japanese in exchange for Singapore and Malaysia back. Per Tojo on 27 May 1942, "At this time I should like to emphasize again anew what I have said once before in the previous Diet meeting to the leaders of Australia that they should survey the international situation, take into consideration Australia's geographical (jurisdiction), and decide upon their measures of disposal which at the present time is most important". Some sort of proposal was likely either in the works or ready for discussion pending a major victory...like a US decimation at Midway. If your home is at risk of invasion by people known to commit atrocities and your armies are on another continent while your allies are unable to defeat the aggessors...

However, they would already see substantial US help in theater by June 1942 before this Alt-Midway occurs. So why the defeatist attitude now from AUS & NZ when there are well over a hundred thousand US forces in theater?

Substantial help that still doesn't seem to be enough to defeat an enemy that overwhelmed (now two) world powers in a matter of months and all but kicked the previously top two navies out of most of the Pacific. There was actually a meeting between the Pacific Allies specifically about this contingency before Midway.

Except there was no possibility of an IJ invasion of Hawaii let alone the complete fantasy of an attack directly on CONUS. Even if a few western Governors or Senators get their knickers twisted, there won't be any significant change to Germany First.

First there was no possibility of an attack on Pearl Harbor. Then there was no possibility that Singapore would fall at such speed. Now it's impossible the Japanese land at Hawaii? They'd actually written up to do so at the Pearl Harbor attack but decided against it later. French Frigate Shoals and/or Tern Island will likely see both sides try to build an advanced base.

'Europe First' had opponents like Ernest King and Douglas MacArthur who will use the British delay of a cross-channel invasion less than a month later at the Second Washington Conference to push for redirection of the bulk of resources to the Pacific. There is no guarantee that an enemy with increasing naval dominance now able to take territory in two US territories does not command the focus of the United States after such a Midway.
 
You might want to read about New Zealand's assessment of Fiji around the time of Midway.

The UK had already come to Japan with a proposal to recognize Northern China and Manchuria as Japanese in exchange for Singapore and Malaysia back.

Source for these? I'm genuinely curious.

'Europe First' had opponents like Ernest King and Douglas MacArthur who will use the British delay of a cross-channel invasion less than a month later at the Second Washington Conference to push for redirection of the bulk of resources to the Pacific.

Oh, Absolutely. But they would use any argument for more resources in the Pacific, and did.

Vastly more likely is that they use it and get a few more things pried loose. But then, as has been noted, in 1942 the Pacific was getting the lion's share anyway.
 
Then we are free to disagree.

Well, naturally!

Look, I used to think that a defeat at Midway meant Yamamoto running wild through Melanesia, becuse it was the one obvious play left open to Japan, and they're just dinky islands with great beaches. It's just that the more more I looked at what the Allies had in these places by mid-1942 and the topography, the harder it became to make the numbers add up. The logistics are gruesome enough for the IJN even if they're relatively undefended.

For an Alt-historian, it can be frustrating to conclude that a great turning point that goes the other way doesn't have the kind of strategic payoff that conventional wisdom suggests it should. That it is not pregnant with rich possibilities for a dramatically different history. That in this case Japan is not in a position to convert a naval victory into lots of new real estate in the South Pacific and possibly even a dramatic alteration in Allied strategy (let alone winning the war), and that this is the case because by mid-1942, Japan's outer perimeter really was where her prewar planning suggested she could be - at the outermost limit of her logistic reach.

This is not to say that a Japanese victory at Midway doesn't have significant butterflies. It almost certainly butterflies away the Solomons Campaign or most of it. If the Japanese take Port Moresby (which they probably could) in its wake, MacArthur is not getting anywhere near Biak or possibly even Hollandia by mid-1944, and so would have to participate in any Philippines Campaign out of the Central Pacific. Thre would be some other modest but notable adjustments to American production priorities and deployments. It might even cost FDR the House in the '42 elections.
 
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I'd just love to see that army assessment. Have to look into that.

It doesn't seem realistic, more of an absolute worst case scenario (which might pry loose more funding for the army!). I mean, Auckland is almost as far from New Cal as New Cal is from Rabaul. This looks like a somewhat sensationalized NZ Herald story.

I mean, if your point is just that you're going to get more of a panic going in Australia and New Zealand, I don't disagree. But the real test is how Washington responds, because it holds all the cards, and there were definite limits to how much Wellington and Canberra could do to change Washington's thinking on things.

Peace proposal by the UK to Japan: http://www.fsmitha.com/h2/ch23ja2.htm

Wow. This is the first I have heard of this. On the same day that Singapore fell? Did Churchill or Eden authorize this? IF so, how would they expect Roosevelt to react?

I can't google anything else on it beyond a note on Nakano's Wiki page that it is dubious, but I'd love to get to the bottom of it.
 

nbcman

Donor
I'd just love to see that army assessment. Have to look into that.

It doesn't seem realistic, more of an absolute worst case scenario (which might pry loose more funding for the army!). I mean, Auckland is almost as far from New Cal as New Cal is from Rabaul. This looks like a somewhat sensationalized NZ Herald story.

I mean, if your point is just that you're going to get more of a panic going in Australia and New Zealand, I don't disagree. But the real test is how Washington responds, because it holds all the cards, and there were definite limits to how much Wellington and Canberra could do to change Washington's thinking on things.



Wow. This is the first I have heard of this. On the same day that Singapore fell? Did Churchill or Eden authorize this? IF so, how would they expect Roosevelt to react?

I can't google anything else on it beyond a note on Nakano's Wiki page that it is dubious, but I'd love to get to the bottom of it.

I found an additional reference to the supposed peace proposal in a book that is, to put it politely, utter garbage. It is a side reference to a document that was stolen from a safe in a spy thriller-which is then followed by physical abuse, a rape scene, and other assorted violence.

From Heidelberg to Shanghai by Jay Chung-Chen.
 
I found an additional reference to the supposed peace proposal in a book that is, to put it politely, utter garbage. It is a side reference to a document that was stolen from a safe in a spy thriller-which is then followed by physical abuse, a rape scene, and other assorted violence.

From Heidelberg to Shanghai by Jay Chung-Chen.

Well, it would be political dynamite if it were true. Ernie King would probably drive over to burn down the British Embassy in person if he got wind of it.

But desperate as the British were to focus on the ETO, I just can't see Churchill authorizing this. Maybe it was some rogue effort? I just can't say without more information.

Honestly I think Tojo would have hugged any such proposal and made it breakfast and given it a backrub.
 
It is indeed worth underlining here that it is not just logistical issues that make it so difficult to make Japanese troops available for these options, but also, as Zheng says, IJA opposition to the use of its troops on such scale.

Take those 30,000 troops employed at Guadalcanal. If the IJN had approached the Army in early summer and said: "Hey, we need to take this remote jungle-infested island in the Solomons because we think we can build a strategically valuable airfield there - we just need 30,000 of your troops to do it," they would likely have been thrown out of the room. Guadalcanal was instead built up by dribs and drabs, with a regiment here, a brigade there, extracted from the IJA to be fed into the meatgrinder, easier to sell when it became apparent how much the Americans were committing to the battle. Now honor was at stake.

To get the IJA to commit a multi-division force up front for New Cal or Fiji or Samoa - even if you could somehow scrounge up the shipping to a) get them there, and b) keep supplying them - this is going to be much harder.

From what I've seen, there's just a lot of bad intelligence (New Caledonia) and handwavium (Fiji) in the spring articulation of Operation FS. Either it was just assumed that the islands would be minimally defended, or that they'd just be routed in short order anyway. One can't help but feel a strong strain of victory disease in these Japanese plans.

For OPERATION C the Navy actually proposed an invasion of Ceylon, the Army essentially didn't return their phone calls. That's why OP C was nothing more than a glorified raid that did some damage and sank some ships and embarrassed the British but otherwise wasn't worth the fuel they used or pilots they lost.
 
Well, naturally!

Look, I used to think that a defeat at Midway meant Yamamoto running wild through Melanesia, becuse it was the one obvious play left open to Japan, and they're just dinky islands with great beaches. It's just that the more more I looked at what the Allies had in these places by mid-1942 and the topography, the harder it became to make the numbers add up. The logistics are gruesome enough for the IJN even if they're relatively undefended.

For an Alt-historian, it can be frustrating to conclude that a great turning point that goes the other way doesn't have the kind of strategic payoff that conventional wisdom suggests it should. That it is not pregnant with rich possibilities for a dramatically different history. That in this case Japan is not in a position to convert a naval victory into lots of new real estate in the South Pacific and possibly even a dramatic alteration in Allied strategy (let alone winning the war), and that this is the case because by mid-1942, Japan's outer perimeter really was where her prewar planning suggested she could be - at the outermost limit of her logistic reach.

This is not to say that a Japanese victory at Midway doesn't have significant butterflies. It almost certainly butterflies away the Solomons Campaign or most of it. If the Japanese take Port Moresby (which they probably could) in its wake, MacArthur is not getting anywhere near Biak or possibly even Hollandia by mid-1944, and so would have to participate in any Philippines Campaign out of the Central Pacific. Thre would be some other modest but notable adjustments to American production priorities and deployments. It might even cost FDR the House in the '42 elections.

This is also because we've been raised on the mythology that if the Japanese had won at Midway, Hawaii was bound to fall soon afterwards, and the West Coast would be exposed to raids by the Kido Butai.
 
This is also because we've been raised on the mythology that if the Japanese had won at Midway, Hawaii was bound to fall soon afterwards, and the West Coast would be exposed to raids by the Kido Butai.

And, well, you'd get this in short order, tomodachi:

1000
 
For OPERATION C the Navy actually proposed an invasion of Ceylon, the Army essentially didn't return their phone calls. That's why OP C was nothing more than a glorified raid that did some damage and sank some ships and embarrassed the British but otherwise wasn't worth the fuel they used or pilots they lost.

Careful, or you will summon Glenn239 from the depths!

It's not even impossible the Japanese could have taken Ceylon, or at any rate much of it, with some lucky breaks. For a little while, at least. But the Army wasn't wrong to think that it would be a drug-addled exercise to try it, and hope that the salesman would just go away if they didn't answer the door.

The real problem is, looking at the major strategic possibilities beyond the new perimeter was a grim list for the Japanese:

1. Soviet Far East: The Army had had more than it could take after Khalkhin Gol, and little appetite to try more; the IJN would be of very limited help, beyond assisting in taking major Soviet ports. Meanwhile, the US Navy is gestating an avalanche of steel with a late 1943 due date.
2. China: Kwangtung Army was already doing all that could be done; the Navy would be useless here anyway.
3. India/Ceylon: Pretty robustly defended, with tough terrain, and again, the IJN could only help with Ceylon, at heavy risk. The Army wanted no part of it. The only hope here was a general Indian uprising, which never seemed to happen.
4. Australia: A logistic nightmare, and any beachhead established at Darwin would quickly amount to the world's largest self-administered POW camp, with the added bonus of a hundred indigenous species that that like to feast on human flesh. The Army wanted no part of it.
5. Alaska: Horrible weather and terrain, little local infrastructure or resources (beyond seafood and timber), and even without the Alcan, the Americans and Canadians can get troops up there more quickly than you can if you actually manage to seize a beachhead on the mainland. The Army wanted no part of it.
6. Oahu: You might as well try Sealion.

So basically, the only thing left is Melanesia. It looks less bad (and more politically sell-able) than any other option, and has the most possibilties for Navy participation. And, indeed, this seems to have been the IJN staff's conclusion. Problem is, it turns out that it's also awfully damned hard, and its key islands are already too well defended for the available army troops, logistics, and IJN air power to tackle, save possibly for outlying garrisons (though I think even Efate and Espiritu Santo would have been butcher houses even if unreinforced by Nimitz - pyrrhic victories, even if the Japanese prevail).
 
I found an additional reference to the supposed peace proposal in a book that is, to put it politely, utter garbage. It is a side reference to a document that was stolen from a safe in a spy thriller-which is then followed by physical abuse, a rape scene, and other assorted violence.

From Heidelberg to Shanghai by Jay Chung-Chen.

https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/wi-japan-accepts-the-british-peace-treaty.443141/

You did not bring that up when you commented on the same peace proposal early last year. Why not do so then?
 
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