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.

Why stop the operation. Kido Butai is not magic, it cannot be in two places at once and will have had massive losses in the air groups - the IJN always did and US traffic analysis had a good fix on major units during this period. The carrier force for Watchtower is a distant cover force and not doing this now means the IJN can create a large airbase you will have to reduce later. Its not a given either way but the reasons for launching the op don't change. Nor does the aggressive use of the available USN forces. They have been doing this since day 1 of the pacific war. What has changed is the availability of 1st Marines to use aggressively. KB would counter raid but its a raid. Every time the force deploys its risks being hit by a sub, and burns fuel.
 

Geon

Donor
Why stop the operation. Kido Butai is not magic, it cannot be in two places at once and will have had massive losses in the air groups - the IJN always did and US traffic analysis had a good fix on major units during this period. The carrier force for Watchtower is a distant cover force and not doing this now means the IJN can create a large airbase you will have to reduce later. Its not a given either way but the reasons for launching the op don't change. Nor does the aggressive use of the available USN forces. They have been doing this since day 1 of the pacific war. What has changed is the availability of 1st Marines to use aggressively. KB would counter raid but its a raid. Every time the force deploys its risks being hit by a sub, and burns fuel.

However in the original Battle of Guadalcanal it should be noted that Nimitz and King had a lot more to work with. Until the other carriers are ready they only have these 3 versus the IJN. There is less of a "margin of safety" as it were. And once the invasion begins the IJN will be sending the combined fleet to find those carriers. Especially with the losses at Iron Bottom Sound and elsewhere during the naval battles of Guadalcanal I really doubt Nimitz and King will want to risk the only 3 carriers left in the Pacific unless they have British carrier backup.
 
Thanks for this.

Planned for Matterhorn, 20,000 tons airlifted per month, 18,000 tons a month over the pipeline from India, 65,000 tons per month by road to the 127 airfields ( 113 new construction plus the road and pipeline) starting in early 1945 supporting around 4000 heavy bombers.

That would be enough to fully support 11x German 6th Army at Stalingrad, forever. Its the single most expensive campaign planned for WW2 and that assumes the B29 sunk cost is excluded.

Now that does not happen but the preparatory work starting in 43 does with the establishment of the Indian end of the line and initial airfield construction which requires the aircraft, materials and shipping and supplies to sustain US forces in India and although not at planned levels the actual deliveries would keep 3/4 6th armies in woolly socks and ammo.

Using just the tons presented we can guess the cargo capacity requirement was 113,000 tons per month. Assuming 90 day round trip. The same amount of cargo delivered to the UK from the US might be a 30 day round trip, Being conservative and allowing 30 days loading and refitting time the same set of ships delivers double the cargo, or 226,000 tons per month. Using the logistics guide for Op OVERLORD of 900 tons daily or 27,000 tons monthly for a division slice of 44,000 men, then this can add sustainment for eight Brit or US ground combat divisions, plus their slice of corps, army, and tactical air support. In other words Op MATTERHORN was allocated the resources to sustain a entire west Allied Army. Probablly more actually, but this will do to illustrate

Cartwheel is harder as its a string of operations and then sustainment of a string of bases so the expense is less on the offensive operations and more on the supplies and shipping to maintain large forces, and air forces in particular, in not achieving very much in terms of defeating Japan. I am not aware of any single source.

My impression is the Allies had no clear idea what their shipping capacity was or where it was going, the confusion was so great in 1942. 1943 might have more reliable records, but the scale of the cargo capacity grows off the charts. I've not seen any useful summaries of Allied cargo shipping capacity or where it was used. Just small snapshots and tangental indicators. Ambrose, Atkinson, Lord, ect... never wrote books on logistics. The few obscure books I've seen are short on data, or even summaries with numbers.

But all of it is dependent on shipping and with a weaker USN is it affordable. The real savings are twofold. One is in merchant shipping which instead of sailing the vasty pacific is doing short quick trips across the Atlantic. and In the Follow ups to Cartwheel into the PI. If you keep roughly to schedule Truk is bypassed in early 44 and with Truk bypassed Rabaul is not a target. Its purpose is to defend Truk.

Its clear neither the Army nor its offspring the Army Air Force understood War Plan ORANGE. The USN had crunched the numbers, tested their assumptions, crunched the numbers again and tested assorted war plans vs Japan since the war scare of 1907. The Central Pacific offensive was in terms of resources the most efficient choice given a goal of forcing our terms on Japan. MacArthur as former Army CoS should have understood this, but I guess he never read or understood the reports from the Joint Army/Navy planning Board. Or maybe he did not give a damm.
 
However in the original Battle of Guadalcanal it should be noted that Nimitz and King had a lot more to work with. Until the other carriers are ready they only have these 3 versus the IJN. There is less of a "margin of safety" as it were. And once the invasion begins the IJN will be sending the combined fleet to find those carriers. Especially with the losses at Iron Bottom Sound and elsewhere during the naval battles of Guadalcanal I really doubt Nimitz and King will want to risk the only 3 carriers left in the Pacific unless they have British carrier backup.

Perfect, the IJN have to penetrate past the recon of Henderson and operating at extreme range from a safe harbour will approach the very well defended airfields of New Caledonia with plenty of time to deploy a sub picket line while the US carriers stand off and approach before launching a surprise attack while the carriers groups are depleted by land based air.

Instead of battles in narrow waters with confusing radar images it will be in the open water with lots of land based air support and no chance of the slightly damaged limping out of range during daylight because Cactus will get them.

Random bombing of Henderson once every couple of weeks, ( a perilous mission as you do not know where the US subs are and have no air warning system on the carriers to stop the americans attacking) does not supress the base, it just wears the ships and aircrew and burns fuel.

The problem with the less margin of safety argument is there was none anyway. The initial invasion is sledgehammer and nut thereafter the USN had to retire every time an IJN heavy unit appeared. Unless an IJN force arrives at precisely the right time the invasion lands and will be bombed about 8 hours later anyway. After that its unload and get Cactus working. Arguably without the USN CV force having a advanced airbase you can resupply overnight and fly in and out of from land bases is even more important. It brings the sinkable IJN carriers into range and still allows you to launch air attacks against Rabaul.

There seems to be some sort of notion ( shared by the IJN) that the American wimps will crawl into a corner and beg not to be hit again. Or they can do what they did, which is act with vigour and aggression putting men of war in harms way to achieve victory every way they can think of.

Second best in the world the USN.
 
Would it have been possible for the Japanese to destroy Midway's communication equipment, and then bombard the American positions with poison gas?

They did cause some damage. There was a back up system for critical channels which worked. The air strike caused the usual amount of damage by WWII standards, which is to say some but nothing above the level of annoying. The Comm system stood, few to none cannon were damaged, ammunition storage untouched, defense bunkers intact. It would have required a series of large airstrikes to beat down the defense.

Gas could be a problem. As always the Devil is in the details. A good stiff breeze might blow 90% of a light agent out to sea. Any salt in the air or on surfaces would act as a Alkaline, changing the molecules of the agent. Most poison gases are strongly acidic & are neutralized by Alkaline compounds. Bleach is a good one. Then there is the question of if the Marines & SeaBees kept their masks, or were issued any at all.
 
Thanks for this.



Using just the tons presented we can guess the cargo capacity requirement was 113,000 tons per month. Assuming 90 day round trip. The same amount of cargo delivered to the UK from the US might be a 30 day round trip, Being conservative and allowing 30 days loading and refitting time the same set of ships delivers double the cargo, or 226,000 tons per month. Using the logistics guide for Op OVERLORD of 900 tons daily or 27,000 tons monthly for a division slice of 44,000 men, then this can add sustainment for eight Brit or US ground combat divisions, plus their slice of corps, army, and tactical air support. In other words Op MATTERHORN was allocated the resources to sustain a entire west Allied Army. Probablly more actually, but this will do to illustrate



My impression is the Allies had no clear idea what their shipping capacity was or where it was going, the confusion was so great in 1942. 1943 might have more reliable records, but the scale of the cargo capacity grows off the charts. I've not seen any useful summaries of Allied cargo shipping capacity or where it was used. Just small snapshots and tangental indicators. Ambrose, Atkinson, Lord, ect... never wrote books on logistics. The few obscure books I've seen are short on data, or even summaries with numbers.



Its clear neither the Army nor its offspring the Army Air Force understood War Plan ORANGE. The USN had crunched the numbers, tested their assumptions, crunched the numbers again and tested assorted war plans vs Japan since the war scare of 1907. The Central Pacific offensive was in terms of resources the most efficient choice given a goal of forcing our terms on Japan. MacArthur as former Army CoS should have understood this, but I guess he never read or understood the reports from the Joint Army/Navy planning Board. Or maybe he did not give a damm.

More like 110 days round trip San Diego - Calcutta or NY, around the Cape with a 7 kt speed of advance, gotta zig zag.

Phillips Peyson O'Brien How the War was Won is interesting but it is all very confused in early 42 in particular and their really is no Allied perspective. There is a British and several American and Indian and it all changes as things get redirected and the new construction comes online. Lots of merchies went Away from the Japanese to the nearest safe harbour in Aus India or Africa or the US presumably and its not helped by redirection of forces towards the Japanese at the same time. The data probably does exist except as snapshots.

But yes the USN had a plan and the USA did not understand it. Unfortunately the USA also had a plan and at some point the USN seemed to have agreed to things involving the PI.

O'Brien is worth reading. He makes several non obvious points. US staff work was truly appalling early on. Unprepared, ill informed and not joined up Army/Navy, the classic is in the first series of staff meetings all the data and maps were supplied by the Brits and a lot of the time the Air expert in the meeting was the RAF guy, the US only had two services so unless they happened to have an AAC or Carrier guy present in another job everyone was deferring to the RAF as the air expert ( and when there was an AAC or Carrier guy they tended to gang up with the RAF against everyone else). The other is the relative unimportance of Marshall/King and Arnold in the top decisions. That was Leahy FDR. FDR barely met with the others. Also King got along really well with Portal.
 
Marines were issued Gas Mask on Wake, so I'd say yes.

Ans for poison gas(well liquid that turns to gas) needs a lot of shells, since the content is so low and some is destroyed when the dispersal charge goes off.

For to really work, you would need a barge filled with mortars, and hauling gas shell around, you have a chance of that being hit by the defenders, like with Bari when John Harvey was bombed
 
Marines were issued Gas Mask on Wake, so I'd say yes.

Ans for poison gas(well liquid that turns to gas) needs a lot of shells, since the content is so low and some is destroyed when the dispersal charge goes off.

For to really work, you would need a barge filled with mortars, and hauling gas shell around, you have a chance of that being hit by the defenders, like with Bari when John Harvey was bombed

This early they would almost certainly be issued with and carry gas masks. The other issue is every gas bomb carried is something else not carried and the ammo bunkers on a carrier are severely limited. Gas is not vs a prepared enemy a miracle weapon the end point of WW1 is using it as flank protection and to suppress batteries by making them fire more slowly, because of the protective gear need to move around.
 
...
O'Brien is worth reading. He makes several non obvious points. US staff work was truly appalling early on. Unprepared, ill informed and not joined up Army/Navy, ...

I blame Congress. Repeated budget cuts for the US Army left literally nothing for things like peace time planning staff. Seconding Regular Army officers to reserve units because there was even less funding for this, or diverting others to the CCC did not help. From 1922 through 1938 its only a biannual series of death by a a thousand cuts. In 1938 the Army could not keep a single division size formation combat ready. Nor provide sufficient trained cadres for the few units still existing. The initial expansion of 1939-1940 was difficult & the the emergency acts causing the expansion from 250,000 to 1,600,000 in a year pushed the ability of the few staff trained officers beyond all limits. Marshals insistence on ridding the Army of the sick lame and lazy among the officers ranks aggravated the problem. Every Reserve National Guard, or Regular officer was literally irreplaceable in the ranks. Those with training or experience at high level staff work could not cover the staff slots in the combat and service formations. Filling the War Plans Division & related staff offices around Marshals desk with qualified men was simply impossible. The essential task of sidelining the politics ridden Quarter Masters Corps & consolidating support functions in the new Army Service Forces did not help either. The nazis had 5-6 years to turn the 100,000 man Reichswehr into a four million man Wehrmacht. In two years the US Army went from just over 200,000 at the start of 1940 to over three million with another three million incoming.

Even without the Depression its questionable if Congress would have funded a sufficiently robust peace time planning staff for the Army. Both Marsh & Pershing as CoS tried to preserve what had been created in the Great War. Congress flatly refused cutting the officers ranks drastically in the early 1920s budgets. Offices like the Joint Planning Board were understaffed from the start considering their responsibilities. When the crisis came Marshal had to put priority on spreading his inadequate numbers of skilled staffers across the mobilization establishment. As painful as it might be the War Plans Division had to make do with a handful of Weidermyers & Eisenhowers, not the hundreds of principles and junior staffers it really needed.
 
As others have said the chances of taking Midway island are slim and none. The Japanese naval superiority is fleeting, the ships can only maintain themselves at sea for a very limited period (during the Guadalcanal fighting the IJA was warned that naval support was only available for two weeks then the fleet had to retire to refuel and resupply, there is a reason the USN build a fleet train) That takes no account of ammo expenditure btw. So any remaining garrison has an airbase and only needs periodic reinforcement convoys.

As @CalBear has observed, it would be like trying to take Tarawa. Only without Spruance's 5th Fleet and Turner's V Amphibious Corps (35,000 Marines, you know).

That's how tough a position Midway had become by June 1942. Japanese intelligence simply had no idea.
 
Would it have been possible for the Japanese to destroy Midway's communication equipment, and then bombard the American positions with poison gas?

You have to ask yourself why the Japanese, who were a veritable war crimes juggernaut, and who frequently used both chemical and biological agents against the Chinese, declined to do so against either U.S. or British forces.
 
Would it have been possible for the Japanese to destroy Midway's communication equipment, and then bombard the American positions with poison gas?

Why would they have poison gas at midway? After all, “everyone knows” the Americans are weak, decadent cowards, who will fold at the first bayonet charge from our skilled, brave, courageous, and most impressive troops! Banzai!

There’s also the minor fact that unlike the Chinese, the Americans are more then able to play the chemical warfare game.
 
The problem with the less margin of safety argument is there was none anyway. The initial invasion is sledgehammer and nut thereafter the USN had to retire every time an IJN heavy unit appeared. Unless an IJN force arrives at precisely the right time the invasion lands and will be bombed about 8 hours later anyway. After that its unload and get Cactus working. Arguably without the USN CV force having a advanced airbase you can resupply overnight and fly in and out of from land bases is even more important. It brings the sinkable IJN carriers into range and still allows you to launch air attacks against Rabaul.

There seems to be some sort of notion ( shared by the IJN) that the American wimps will crawl into a corner and beg not to be hit again. Or they can do what they did, which is act with vigour and aggression putting men of war in harms way to achieve victory every way they can think of.

I agree with your latter observation - Nimitz and King were not the kind of men who were just going to sit quietly on defense and let Yamamoto have his way for 12-18 months, even after a disaster like the one we are exploring.

But the margin of safety is a real issue here. During the Guadalcanal Campaign, Nimitz suffered mission kills to his fleet carriers five times (two of them in total loss of the ship). His commanders were able to keep plugging along because there was always at least one deck available. Here, he only has two carriers left to start with. If the US suffers something like the Santa Cruz Islands, it has nothing left to fight with for a couple months. The Cactus Air Force and whatever is in Efate has to carry the entire air cover load.

Meanwhile, Yamamoto now has four extra carriers to work with, and presumably more veteran pilots.

It was ballsy enough for King to greenlight WATCHTOWER in OTL - even after Midway, the Japanese had more carrier deck space, and superiority almost across the board in ship types, closer to their own support base, with a major advantage in night-fighting. But King and Nimitz went ahead and did it anyway. Here, however, they're down to just two carriers for the entire Pacific, and no possible reinforcements until at least 1Q 1943. I really doubt that King would still go ahead with the operation in these circumstances.

P.S. Adding two Illustrious class ships to the fleet definitely helps, but then I am left to wonder whether the British would be amenable to Nimitz using them in such an aggressive fashion. To parry IJN offensives against New Cal, the New Hebrides, Fiji - sure. But invading the Solomons, while Yamamoto still has all his carriers? This might cause some peptic acid in the Combined Chiefs meetings.
 
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Operation FS is a fantasy. The Japanese simply do not have the troops available nor do they have the shipping to move or sustain them. The identified available forces. forces are 17th army ( actually a corps) the actual forces available are 35th inf BDE, 4th and 28 inf regt with the possibility of the balance of 2nd ID (4th IR is a component) and an outside possibility of elements of 38th ID ( OTL one regiment was used the rest in New Guinea.)

Honestly, calling the South Seas Force even a corps is a push. It was a motley grab bag of a few regimental combat teams, give or take. Inferior in total numbers of troops to the actual garrisons already in place on New Cal and Fiji, with no amphibious doctrine to speak of. A real recipe for disaster waiting to happen.

Adding the 2nd and 38th divisions would help, but even then, just well nigh impossible to see how even this force gets any further than Efate.
 

Geon

Donor
P.S. Adding two Illustrious class ships to the fleet definitely helps, but then I am left to wonder whether the British would be amenable to Nimitz using them in such an aggressive fashion. To parry IJN offensives against New Cal, the New Hebrides, Fiji - sure. But invading the Solomons, while Yamamoto still has all his carriers? This might cause some peptic acid in the Combined Chiefs meetings.

Given that after a Midway disaster Australia and New Zealand are extremely nervous about an invasion in these areas so close to their shores I suspect the British will get an ultimatum from both Prime Ministers to the tune of - If you can't spare one or two Illustrious class carriers to help the Americans defend us, then don't expect any more troops to be sent by us to help you against Hitler!
 
Given that after a Midway disaster Australia and New Zealand are extremely nervous about an invasion in these areas so close to their shores I suspect the British will get an ultimatum from both Prime Ministers to the tune of - If you can't spare one or two Illustrious class carriers to help the Americans defend us, then don't expect any more troops to be sent by us to help you against Hitler!

OH, I have no doubt that the Brits will hand them over. I feel 90% positive that in this scenario, Somerville's fast carriers are heading to the South Pacific before June is over.

But they will want some say in how they are used. Bear in mind, too, that while they're armored, they carried fewer planes, and they will have a learning curve in adapting to USN methods, just as Victorious did OTL. You can't use them just like you would a Lexington or a Yorktown. Victorious had so many difficulties with the Avenger that Ramsey ended up using it for fighter cover rather than strikes.

I suspect that whoever Nimitz puts in charge will pair up an Illustrious with a US carrier, in two task forces, with the Brit for cover and the American for strikes. The real question is where you actually use them, and I suspect it is going to be making a hard stand in the New Hebrides, hoping to have better luck this time hitting the Kido Butai in the flank, with more assets on hand to try it. Of course, it is not impossible they mount raids on Guadalcanal and Tulagi, too....
 

CalBear

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Would it have been possible for the Japanese to destroy Midway's communication equipment, and then bombard the American positions with poison gas?
You have to ask yourself why the Japanese, who were a veritable war crimes juggernaut, and who frequently used both chemical and biological agents against the Chinese, declined to do so against either U.S. or British forces.

As Athelstane implies in his response the U.S. and UK had enough Lewisite, Mustard, Phosgene, and in the case of the British, Anthrax to render just about any Japanese held island, up to and including Okinawa more or less uninhabitable.

CW and BW are only actually useful if the other side can't play in the same game. Italy could use it in Ethiopia because the Ethiopians couldn't respond in kind. Just the United States, on the other hand, spent $1.7 BILLION (1942 USD) from 1942-45 to increase its stockpile of CW agents by 143,000 TONS. The U.S. also have a declared "no first use" policy in accordance with the 1925 Geneva Convention on CW usage.

The Japanese didn't use CW against the WAllies because it is never smart to start a rock throwing fight if you are at the bottom of a well with a pile of gravel and the other guy is looking down at you from the surface with a pile of 50 pound granite stones.
 

Errolwi

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If you can't spare one or two Illustrious class carriers to help the Americans defend us, then don't expect any more troops to be sent by us to help you against Hitler!

It was a matter of how quickly the troops come back - OTL NZ stopped sending replacements while they built up land forces in the Pacific. Obviously this put limits on how the 2nd NZ Division could be used.
 

CalBear

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They did cause some damage. There was a back up system for critical channels which worked. The air strike caused the usual amount of damage by WWII standards, which is to say some but nothing above the level of annoying. The Comm system stood, few to none cannon were damaged, ammunition storage untouched, defense bunkers intact. It would have required a series of large airstrikes to beat down the defense.

Gas could be a problem. As always the Devil is in the details. A good stiff breeze might blow 90% of a light agent out to sea. Any salt in the air or on surfaces would act as a Alkaline, changing the molecules of the agent. Most poison gases are strongly acidic & are neutralized by Alkaline compounds. Bleach is a good one. Then there is the question of if the Marines & SeaBees kept their masks, or were issued any at all.
They would have masks, part of the basic ToE. Fortunately in this case, unlike the normal process during assault landing, the troops would have no reason to abandon them soon after assaulting the beach since they would not be running around the freaking jungle with what was seen as useless weight. The masks would have been issued when a GQ was sounded and turned back in to a very attentive quartermaster (who had every damned serial number on his list) afterward, assuming they had not been used afterward.
 
As Athelstane implies in his response the U.S. and UK had enough Lewisite, Mustard, Phosgene, and in the case of the British, Anthrax to render just about any Japanese held island, up to and including Okinawa more or less uninhabitable.

CW and BW are only actually useful if the other side can't play in the same game. Italy could use it in Ethiopia because the Ethiopians couldn't respond in kind. Just the United States, on the other hand, spent $1.7 BILLION (1942 USD) from 1942-45 to increase its stockpile of CW agents by 143,000 TONS. The U.S. also have a declared "no first use" policy in accordance with the 1925 Geneva Convention on CW usage.

The Japanese didn't use CW against the WAllies because it is never smart to start a rock throwing fight if you are at the bottom of a well with a pile of gravel and the other guy is looking down at you from the surface with a pile of 50 pound granite stones.

For comparison's sake, how large was the US stock of chemical weapons by mid-1945? After the occupation of Japan SCAP disposed of 100,000 tons of chemical weapons in the Home Islands alone (which is about as much as was used in all of World War I). This is without factoring in biological weapons, which killed up to 2 million people in China without producing a decisive result.

The Japanese had no hope of using WMDs on the Allies in any way that would have changed the outcome of the war, but in the event the Americans used poison gas during an invasion of the mainland the IJA was in a position to respond. Unfortunately for the civilian population, there were almost no measures in place to prepare them for chemical warfare and they would have been defenseless.
 
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