The Japanese would need some mighty big Alien Space Mammals to pull this one off.
Hence the term 'dream invasion'.
The Japanese would need some mighty big Alien Space Mammals to pull this one off.
I disagree with the assessment of FS as having a lower chance of success than another attempt on Moresby.
Raids would have been tricker with the smaller less capable CVE, but worth planning and attempting under the right circumstances.
And were the Agents of a colonial power against freedom fighter, so it’s problematic.Hey, the Sikhs were only outnumbered 70:1 (~1,500 Afghan tribesmen vs. 21 Sikhs).
Camaron would be an absolutely epic movie (just the whole Wooden hand pledge alone). Of course the Legion was only outnumbered about 50:1.
And were the Agents of a colonial power against freedom fighter, so it’s problematic.
Remember taffy 3, they gave as well as they got.Not impossible and worth considering, but obviously the real drawback is the slow speed (19kt) of the CVE's.
Remember taffy 3, they gave as well as they got.
Pledge to Wooden Hand.And were the Agents of a colonial power against freedom fighter, so it’s problematic.
IIRC it consumed 8 times the tonnage to ship 1 ton of supplies to the South Pacific from the US as it did to ship 1 ton of supplies to the UK. Shipping through the South Pacific with major IJN carrier forces based at Rabaul will be risky.
Port Moresby admittedly becomes extremely difficult for the Japanese in August, once [EDIT: 35 and 36] squadrons and the 21st Brigade are deployed there. If the Japanese try it before that with their most likely force structure, they have...a fighting chance, with some luck.
But Operation FS? It could have taken Efate, possibly. Impossible to see how they could go any further. Setting aside their feeble logistics and lack of robust land-based air in the area, they really had no idea how well defended New Caledonia, Samoa, Fiji, and Espiritu Santo were. Fiji was hosting the entire 37th division by June and the 283 Coastal Artillery Battalion by August, on top of the NZ garrison. New Caledonia alone had something like 35,000 troops by midsummer, including the Americal Division, pretty arguably the best division at that time in the entire U.S. Army, backed by land-based air, and on an emminently defensible island almost completely surrounded by massive coral reefs that made amphibious landings almost impossible, save around Noumea. You would need something like Homma's entire Philippine invasion force to even have a chance, and the Japanese simply did not have anything remotely on that scale available (let alone the shipping to get it there and supply it). This is not an op you are staging a few hundred miles off Formosa. It's almost literally on the other side of the world. It's a thousand miles from your nearest air base at Guadalcanal.
Just look at these reefs. New Cal is an amphibious nightmare:
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Whereas in OTL, the Japanese with maximum effort could not even evict a single understrength, undersupplied Marine Division from Guadalcanal, a division that had not had months to construct defenses, and with almost no infrastructure to support it.
Any IJN carrier forces operating out of range of Truk would require some sort of fleet train, however ad hoc. Cycling oilers back and forth and ammunitions ships with torpedoes & bombs among other things. Maybe the IJN can organize that on a sustained basis in 1942. I don't know.
With the initial landing in the Guadalcanal campaign a surprise landing let US Marines seize the airfield almost immediately. Operation FS would have benefited greatly from that almost complete airfield which worried the Allies enough that Guadalcanal and nearby islands became the target. A disaster at Midway sees that airfield operational for Japan, an equivalent at Espiritu Santo gives them significant reach. More distant islands might then be isolated and reduced accordingly.
The Japanese would need some mighty big Alien Space Mammals to pull this one off.
Wow, something worse than SEA LION.
I wouldn't quite say that. From OTL's Guadalcanal, we can see that Japan did have a few advantages:It is not *impossible* that the IJN could take Efate or even Espiritu Santo at this time. But to conquer New Caledonia, Fiji, or Samoa: We really are moving into Unmentionable Sea Mammal territory, I'm afraid. I mean, unless the Allies decide to write these islands off and bug out, which I think is damned unlikely, to put it mildly.
I wouldn't quite say that. From OTL's Guadalcanal, we can see that Japan did have a few advantages:
- First, they actually had a night fighting doctrine, while at the time the USN didn't: this is the reason Savo Island was a total bloody mess (and if FS is launched, it means Watchtower isn't, and the US hasn't learned the lessons from it)... for the first couple of night battles in the region, Japan is a likely winner.
- Second, this is also the time when Japanese submarines were sinking US ships every other week. Moving the battlefield south isn't going to change that too much, and it is going to mean hell for the Americans moving stuff to F/S/NC.
- Third, Japan's intelligence estimated the Allied strength in Fiji, Samoa and the New Hebrides reasonably accurately (though they were way off with New Caledonia). I think it is a fair assumption that if they do attempt taking the islands, they would send enough forces that they believe they can win (rather than just the South Seas Force as the May plans said).
- Finally, Fiji and Samoa are hardly closer to any "major" Allied bases (Auckland/Brisbane) than they are to Rabaul. Resupplying these places isn't going to be much easier for the Allies than it is for Japan. As it was, maintaining the Fiji garrison was already stretching NZ's resources.
Before about September, the Allied defences on the islands were weak enough that if Japan threw enough men at them, they would have some chance of taking them. Except New Caledonia, which would need an entire corps thrown at it (and that is beyond Japan's capability).
Instead FS' problem comes down to oil - if they do Midway, they probably aren't going to have enough of it to do FS quickly enough to have a reasonable chance of victory (unless they move the fleet south to Truk immediately after hitting Midway, without going back to Japan first). But even so, still easier than the USM. They had (barely) the resources to pull it off, and in July/August the Allied strength in the reason isn't great enough to kill the operation immediately.
- BNC
"I think it is a fair assumption that if they do attempt taking the islands, they would send enough forces that they believe they can win (rather than just the South Seas Force as the May plans said)."
Do you somehow think the US had no ability to interdict submarine operations off the coast of their major stronghold in the Pacific? You'd lose some ships sure, but convoys would be implemented in rather short order. And the threat is not from above you in the hierarchy, its from some junior officer with a chip on his shoulder and his service pistol or sword, with a better 'idea' about how the war should be run then the real professionals.