December 5 1941. The day of catastrophe.

That could actually help the Japanese. If the BBs are at sea, they get plastered and sink in deep water. Remember army air force fliers didn't fly out of sight of land.

Assuming both Enterprise and Lex are still off delivering aircraft, things could be nasty.

Anyone hear anything about Midway or Wake last week? They're pretty exposed, wonder how much damage they would take from the tsunami.

What? Tsunami waves are barely noticeable in deep water. Though I would think that if the battleships are at Midway or Wake the damage would be greater than if they were at San Diego or wherever they were in December 1941.
 

Bearcat

Banned
What? Tsunami waves are barely noticeable in deep water. Though I would think that if the battleships are at Midway or Wake the damage would be greater than if they were at San Diego or wherever they were in December 1941.

It isn't deep water on Midway or Wake. :rolleyes: I was wondering what kind of damage would be done to the land defenses there - particularly the critical marine gun emplacements on Wake.

Battleships? Ummm... you mean the ones that got hammered at Pearl Harbor? There are none at San Diego. One in refit at Bremerton.

The battleships at Pearl in TTL would perhaps sink in deep water, not because of the tsunami, but because of eating too many torpedoes from Kates.
 
No, they actually made thousands of calls and several were intercepted and forwarded to Kimmel, but got lost in the bureaucracy only to turn up in 1990s in the National Archives, Seattle, Washington. Also found was Robert Ogg's original signed and date stamp report to Kimmel regarding the exact location of the Akagi and several of the Marus on November 30, 1941. It got lost in the bureaucracy on the way to Kimmel.

The logs from TESTM, Station CAST, intercepted a total of 129 radio transmissions from and to Kido Butai.
This IS conpiracy theory. Or, just plain wrong, anyway.

The keys on the commo equipment were REMOVED on all ships.

Not only was Kido Butai under radio silence, it could not have signaled, without getting those keys re-installed, if they had wanted to.

Many officers on those carriers were quite clear when interrogated after the war: NO messages were sent by Kido Butai during the Hawaii operation. NONE.

Ask our resident Pacific experts if you don't believe me. Calbear and Markus and company will along sooner or later.

There were plenty of intercepted messages - but not sent by Nagumo. And most of them were decrypted much later - some after the war, even.
Thank you for saying that, Bearcat,:) because whenever I hear this claim, it makes me want to scream.:mad: You're right on all counts: removed keys, no DF bearings, no revealling messages in PURPLE (& the U.S. wasn't reading J-19, which contained the "bomb plot" message), not actually reading JN-25 (there were some breaks, mainly in the additive tables, as I understand it; it's been years since I read Kahn, so how much IDK anymore).

Friend Commissar is right,:confused::p there's no conspiracy: there was far-excessive secrecy over PURPLE & JN-25, which is why Short & Kimmel (or, rather, their cryppies) didn't get the machines & books, & MacArthur (or Cast) did. Note, it helped MacArthur none at all...:rolleyes:

There were, for the uninformed, many messages sent by ships' radiomen (who IIRC were left ashore, compounding the problem of contacting Japan) transmitting false traffic, to disguise the fact the Kido Butai was not in Home Waters.
Even if Nagumo could not send signals himself, what was preventing him from recieving signals. Wasn't the order telling him to attack by Yamamoto sent over the radio. I would think Yamamoto or someone elso back at HQ would have a list of contingency orders drawn up to transmit to Nagumo telling him to attack or withdraw, even at a late date.

Even if Nagumo can not reply to a communication, I see nothing preventing him from recieving communications, unless he physically rips out every single radio in the fleet.
Without the sources in front of me, I believe Nagumo's ops order said to go unless he was detected. AFAIK, there was no contingency for recall if disaster struck Japan. Nor am I clear how a recall would help, unless you mean simply avoiding war & making disaster into catastrophe. That also requires recall of the Thai TF, & peace with China.
December 6, 1941, 7 PM, near base:

"Hey Willie, wanna go to the club for a couple of cold ones?"
"Sorry, Joe, the ol' man wants us on deck by 0700. We gotta look for survivors from that big wave that came through yesterday."
"Gonna fly that big new pontoon rescue plane?"
"I'll be on board with binoculars. Frank will be throwing out the life jackets."
"How many do you think are still out there?"
"I dunno. We found four today."

Without any more details about Japan except that "there was an earthquake," the tsunami will generate a completely different level of responsiveness among the Americans. The Japanese attack was based on known American habits and an ordinary Sunday morning would be best. But this is no longer an ordinary Sunday morning.

How long would it take for the Arizona and crew to pull anchor and take battle stations?
This is actually the most interesting result. While I doubt anybody would connect the 'quake to a big wave in '41 (AFAIK, it wasn't well understood tsunami were caused by quakes then), the numbers of small craft swamped &/or missing would probably lead both Kimmel & Short to make max effort searches, which they weren't making OTL 5-7 Dec, which substantially raises the odds of Nagumo being spotted & the attack being nulled per his ops orders.

To stick to the topic, tho: how do you change the geology of Japan to make this happen?:confused::confused:
 
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Does the geology of Japan need to be changed? What is a difference of 70 years to Japan's network of faults?

I don't think the Pacific Fleet's battleships would be sent out to search for small craft. Destroyers and other small ships are better suited to that. The earthquake may lead to a lessening of US preparedness, as it would seem less likely that Japan would go to war after a major disaster.
 
To stick to the topic, tho: how do you change the geology of Japan to make this happen?:confused::confused:

Most of us consider earthquakes "random" events, so we don's need to change geology to change their timing. We know where the risk areas are and we know they occur in series (aftershocks). While the connection between earthquakes and tsunami might not be well known in 1941, reports of some kind of earthquake near Japan will be known worldwide, however lacking in detail. How much would a quake in northern Japan impact the war-readiness of that country?

Rescue attempts for small boats would largely be by air. The effort would be more coast guard-like than navy-like, but given the location, the navy would be there. If attack planes are spotted, could the outcome be changed with a 20-minute warning? Would the Americans be closer to battle stations as a result of wave damage on Saturday?
 
Most of us consider earthquakes "random" events, so we don's need to change geology to change their timing.
Since we also know it didn't happen, you really do. If you want to predict a 'quake, you can safely say it could happen tomorrow; to get one that didn't, you have to explain why the accumulated stresses which OTL didn't are changed to produce one TTL.
 

Bearcat

Banned
You can probably change which fault breaks where and when with butterflies, but it will take time. that is to say, seismic phenomena are not totally deterministic, but since regional stresses start out the same, build slowly, and are relieved only by earthquakes, you're probably talking about many centuries to change a particular fault rupture by half a century.

The problem is, in that case, the butterflies will have far more impact on human history. After 500 years, maybe you do get that earthquake and tsunami a half century later, but it hardly matters, because the People's Kingdom of Nippan never went to war with any of the North Columbian Confederations during that time period. And so on.

Scenarios which require major geologic or astronomical changes, without the butterflies completely changing the human dimension, probably do belong in ASB.
 
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