Disaster on Guadalcanal a possible TL

Larrikin

Banned
No, it's not. Here's why. The Japanese always held their fire when the Marines landed. It was true on Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Guam, Saipan, Tinian, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. It would be ASB for the Japanese to attack
on the day of the landing. As for Australia, the Japanese would deal harshly with any resistance. How do I know this? I studied World War II in
high school. Also, if you remember the Bataan Death March, Japanese soldiers dealt harshly with Filipinos who helped the Americans. Read Ghost
Soldiers, The Last Raid, or any other book on the Pacific War. The average
death rate of Allied prisoners in German POW camps, (Western Allied POWs, that is), was 1-in-3. The average death rate of Western Allied POWs
in Japanese prison camps was 1-in-9. Then you have the slave laborers who were worked to death building the Bridge on the River Kwai. Any Australian resistance would be dealt with even more ruthlessly by the Kempaitai, the Japanese military police, who made the Gestapo look tame
my comparison.

You studied in high school? How nice. I've known blokes who fought in Malaya all my life, I've had dinner with them, drunk beer with them, dated one's daughter, been to barbecues in their and my family's backyards with them.

I also knew the generation of Australians that lived through those times. Kempaitai or not, Australia would have been the Japanese Army's worst nightmare come true.

They would have been trying to hold down a population of 7 million people spread over a country larger than the lower 49 that was armed, unlike the Asian countries and colonies they over ran.
 

Blair152

Banned
The Marines at Tarawa would be somewhat surprised, to say the least, to hear this. They were barely able to hold on the first day.

The doctrine of allowing the Marines to land, then defending in depth, requires more land area than was available in the central Pacific offensive. And, it WAS NOT DEVELOPED until defending at the beaches failed, at Tarawa and elsewhere. It was doctrine in ALL armies in 1942 that the best way to stop an amphibious assault was on the beach. That only worked once, at Wake (First round), but that was the doctrine everyone had.

The Japanese at Guadalcanal ran away mostly because they were construction troops (lots of them Korean), not combat troops.

If you preposition lots of combat troops at Guadalcanal, so that they can attack an invasion quickly (have their guns sighted in and such), you have another problem. King likely will get word of the reinforcement. Ernie King was a fighter but was by no means stupid. If the Japanese raise that high, King will fold and walk away from the game, and wait for the next target of opportunity the Japanese present.
You seem to forget that Yamamoto was a poker player. If King was, and I don't know if he was, then he'd be a fool not to go all in. The Koreans, it turns out, were more Japanese than the Japanese. Allow me to explain.
When the Japanese were building the Bridge on the River Kwai, (which the
movie got totally wrong, BTW), they used Japanese engineers, Korean guards, and Allied slave labor. The slave laborers got starvation rations.
Unfortunately, for the Allied POWs, many of them were killed by their own
men because they were in the holds of Japanese prison ships being transported back to Japan.
 

Blair152

Banned
You studied in high school? How nice. I've known blokes who fought in Malaya all my life, I've had dinner with them, drunk beer with them, dated one's daughter, been to barbecues in their and my family's backyards with them.

I also knew the generation of Australians that lived through those times. Kempaitai or not, Australia would have been the Japanese Army's worst nightmare come true.

They would have been trying to hold down a population of 7 million people spread over a country larger than the lower 49 that was armed, unlike the Asian countries and colonies they over ran.
It's the Lower 48. Yes, I did, and I've read up on World War II. Malaya was
different from Guadalcanal. Perceval couldn't hold it. As for the Marines on
Tarawa, they were literally boxed in. Some landing craft were deliberately
directed into the kill zone. The Higgins boats, which were a direct copy of the Japanese landing barges, were useless at Tarawa because they got hung up on the coral reef. The amtracs fared much better because they
could drive right over the reef and onto the reef. Also, as bad as Tarawa
was, it could have been much worse. Admiral Shibasaki, and his aide, were caught in the open, between headquarters. But the Japanese, just as they had on Guadalcanal, held their fire. They didn't contest the landings on the beaches. Look it up. They didn't contest the beaches on Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Guam, Saipan, Tinian, Leyte, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. The Marines on Tarawa had to burn the Japanese soldiers out of
their caves on Tarawa. It was the same on Guam, Saipan, Tinian, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. When we finally took back Wake Island, we had to do
the same thing there.
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
The Japanese NEVER held their fire before Okinawa. Of all the poorly informed statements you have made, this is perhaps the worst.

The initial landing waves at Tarawa took losses exceeded 80% KIA/WIA. There is a reason that they call it Bloody Tarawa.

The first day on Saipan cost the Marines 2,000 causualties. Objectives for D day were not taken until D+3. At Iwo the assault forces took less than half the D-day objectived on D day. At Peleliu the casualties on D day exceeded 1,100 with more than 60 amtracks destroyed.

The Marine assault battalions on every one of those beaches had to deal with opposition that was, at least, the equal of Omaha Beach.

For God's sake look in a book.

No, it's not. Here's why. The Japanese always held their fire when the Marines landed. It was true on Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Guam, Saipan, Tinian, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. It would be ASB for the Japanese to attack
on the day of the landing. As for Australia, the Japanese would deal harshly with any resistance. How do I know this? I studied World War II in
high school. Also, if you remember the Bataan Death March, Japanese soldiers dealt harshly with Filipinos who helped the Americans. Read Ghost
Soldiers, The Last Raid, or any other book on the Pacific War. The average
death rate of Allied prisoners in German POW camps, (Western Allied POWs, that is), was 1-in-3. The average death rate of Western Allied POWs
in Japanese prison camps was 1-in-9. Then you have the slave laborers who were worked to death building the Bridge on the River Kwai. Any Australian resistance would be dealt with even more ruthlessly by the Kempaitai, the Japanese military police, who made the Gestapo look tame
my comparison.
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
It's the Lower 48. Yes, I did, and I've read up on World War II. Malaya was
different from Guadalcanal. Perceval couldn't hold it. As for the Marines on
Tarawa, they were literally boxed in. Some landing craft were deliberately
directed into the kill zone. The Higgins boats, which were a direct copy of the Japanese landing barges, were useless at Tarawa because they got hung up on the coral reef. The amtracs fared much better because they
could drive right over the reef and onto the reef. Also, as bad as Tarawa
was, it could have been much worse. Admiral Shibasaki, and his aide, were caught in the open, between headquarters. But the Japanese, just as they had on Guadalcanal, held their fire. They didn't contest the landings on the beaches. Look it up. They didn't contest the beaches on Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Guam, Saipan, Tinian, Leyte, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. The Marines on Tarawa had to burn the Japanese soldiers out of
their caves on Tarawa. It was the same on Guam, Saipan, Tinian, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. When we finally took back Wake Island, we had to do
the same thing there.

The U.S. BYPASSED Wake Island. The landing there by Marines was AFTER the surrender and was purely administrative in nature. They actually did a surrender ceremony on board a Destroyer Escort.

You may have read up on WW II. Unfortunately you seem to have scrambled up every singe fact into an impossible mismash.
 

Blair152

Banned
The Japanese NEVER held their fire before Okinawa. Of all the poorly informed statements you have made, this is perhaps the worst.

The initial landing waves at Tarawa took losses exceeded 80% KIA/WIA. There is a reason that they call it Bloody Tarawa.

The first day on Saipan cost the Marines 2,000 causualties. Objectives for D day were not taken until D+3. At Iwo the assault forces took less than half the D-day objectived on D day. At Peleliu the casualties on D day exceeded 1,100 with more than 60 amtracks destroyed.

The Marine assault battalions on every one of those beaches had to deal with opposition that was, at least, the equal of Omaha Beach.

For God's sake look in a book.
I have. The Japanese didn't engage the Marines on Guadalcanal until August 8, 1942. They let the Marines land unopposed before they opened fire. On Tarawa, the response was chaotic, because the Japanese commander had been killed in the pre-invasion bombardment. Saipan, and
Tinian, were lightly defended compared to Guam.
 

Bearcat

Banned
I have. The Japanese didn't engage the Marines on Guadalcanal until August 8, 1942. They let the Marines land unopposed before they opened fire. On Tarawa, the response was chaotic, because the Japanese commander had been killed in the pre-invasion bombardment. Saipan, and
Tinian, were lightly defended compared to Guam.

Ay Caramba.

1. Guadalcanal, from Ze Genocide:

In contrast to Tulagi, Gavutu, and Tanambogo, the landings on Guadalcanal encountered much less resistance. At 09:10 on August 7, Vandegrift and 11,000 U.S. Marines came ashore on Guadalcanal between Koli Point and Lunga Point. Advancing towards Lunga Point, they encountered no resistance except for "tangled" rain forest, and they halted for the night about 1,000 yards (910 m) from the Lunga Point airfield. The next day, again against little resistance, the Marines advanced all the way to the Lunga River and secured the airfield by 16:00 on August 8. The Japanese naval construction units and combat troops, under the command of Captain Kanae Monzen, panicked by the warship bombardment and aerial bombing, had abandoned the airfield area and fled about 3 miles (4.8 km) west to the Matanikau River and Point Cruz area, leaving behind food, supplies, intact construction equipment and vehicles, and 13 dead.[28]

U.S. Marines come ashore on Guadalcanal on August 7, 1942.


During the landing operations on August 7 and August 8, Japanese naval aircraft based at Rabaul, under the command of Sadayoshi Yamada, attacked the Allied amphibious forces several times, setting afire the U.S. transport George F. Elliot (which sank two days later) and heavily damaging the destroyer USS Jarvis.[29] In the air attacks over the two days, the Japanese lost 36 aircraft, while the U.S. lost 19, both in combat and to accident, including 14 carrier fighters.[30]

....

On the evening of August 12, a 25-man U.S. Marine patrol, led by Lieutenant Colonel Frank Goettge and primarily consisting of intelligence personnel, landed by boat west of the Lunga perimeter, between Point Cruz and the Matanikau River, on a reconnaissance mission with a secondary objective of contacting a group of Japanese troops that U.S. forces believed might be willing to surrender. Soon after the patrol landed, a nearby platoon of Japanese naval troops attacked and almost completely wiped out the Marine patrol.[39]


In response, on August 19, Vandegrift sent three companies of the U.S. 5th Marine Regiment to attack the Japanese troop concentration west of the Matanikau. One company attacked across the sandbar at the mouth of the Matanikau river while another crossed the river 1,000 metres (1,100 yd) inland and attacked the Japanese forces located in Matanikau village. The third landed by boat further west and attacked Kokumbuna village. After briefly occupying the two villages, the three Marine companies returned to the Lunga perimeter, having killed about 65 Japanese soldiers while losing four. This action, sometimes referred to as the "First Battle of the Matanikau", was the first of several major actions around the Matanikau River during the campaign.[40]

So, August 19th was the first significant land battle on Guadalcanal.

The battle of the Tenaru, the first to involve significant numbers of troops sent in to reinforce the island, was on the 21st. Two weeks after the USMC landing.


2. On Tarawa, the commander was NOT killed in the pre-landing bombardment, he was killed on day two. The real problem was, the immediate Japanese counter-attacks were poorly coordinated, because the pre-invasion bombardment totally destroyed his comm net by cutting most of the landlines.

3. Saipan... lightly defended?

31,000 IJA troops, versus 22,000 on Guam IIRC.

From Ze Genocide:

The landings began at 07:00 on 15 June 1944. More than 300 LVTs landed 8,000 Marines on the west coast of Saipan by about 09:00. Eleven fire support ships covered the Marine landings. The naval force consisted of the battleships USS Tennessee and California. The cruisers were Birmingham and Indianapolis. The destroyers were Norman Scott, Monssen, Colahan, Halsey Powell, Bailey, Robinson and the Albert W. Grant. Careful Japanese artillery preparation — placing flags in the bay to indicate the range — allowed them to destroy about 20 amphibious tanks, and the Japanese strategically placed barbed wire, artillery, machine gun emplacements, and trenches to maximize the American casualties. However, by nightfall the 2nd and 4th Marine Divisions had a beachhead about 6 miles (10 km) wide and 1/2 mile (1 km) deep.[3] The Japanese counter-attacked at night but were repulsed with heavy losses. On 16 June, units of the U.S. Army's 27th Infantry Division landed and advanced on the Aslito airfield. Again the Japanese counter-attacked at night. On 18 June Saito abandoned the airfield.
 
Even two months after Midway, the Japanese had overwhelming air superiority. The RAAF could be caught on the ground. Prior to Guadalcanal,
the Western Allies had very weak defenses, and the Japanese did bomb Port
Darwin, Australia. Extend the Japanese land-based bombers from Port Darwin to the rest of the country, and give them Zeroes as escorts, and the
Imperial Japanese Naval Air Force would have had superiority over Australia.
After Guadalcanal, things changed. The Australians were afraid of a Japanese
invasion.

I repeat myself...

The Japanese have no aircraft capable of conducting sustained bombing campaigns against those locations. This also means they have no fighters capable of carrying out the proper sweeps necessary to achieve air superiority.

Southeast Australia is the location for everything that really matters. The infrastructure, the industry, and the agriculture are mostly there. All of this exists outside of the range of Japanese aircraft, surface ships, and carrier launched aircraft.

An invasion of Australia would go down from the northwest as a worse catastrophe than the German invasion of Russia.
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
I have. The Japanese didn't engage the Marines on Guadalcanal until August 8, 1942. They let the Marines land unopposed before they opened fire. On Tarawa, the response was chaotic, because the Japanese commander had been killed in the pre-invasion bombardment. Saipan, and
Tinian, were lightly defended compared to Guam.

Saipan was held by 31,000 Japanese troops (about 50% more than on Guam) and included a substantial Japanese civilian population. Japan had planned, contrary to League requirements, to make it a permanent Imperial colony. Saipan is about 55 square miles in area, Guam is over 200 square miles meaning you had 50% more defenders on 75% less island. Somehow that seems to make Saipan quite stoutly defended.

I had really hoped that you were going to give it a real shot this time.

Unfortunately, it is clear that you are either A) Being a troll, B) So far beyond clueless that no term exists to describe your situation, or C) From some Mirror Universe where the dinosaur hunter accidently stepped on a butterfly and returned to the future with it stuck to his boot.

I tend to think it is "A" since you are so often 180 degrees wrong on facts that it is difficulty to see how it is an accident, although "C" also has its points.
 
Guys stop humoring him. We have seen his like before and we will se his like again. All of his arguments have been easily refuted. The only one believing them are him. He is clearly offensively ignorant on just about everything as it regards to this thread and there is no point, no point at all to argue with him
 

Bearcat

Banned
C) From some Mirror Universe where the dinosaur hunter accidently stepped on a butterfly and returned to the future with it stuck to his boot.

On the bright side, wasn't that the one where Homer Simpson made it rain donuts? :D
 
You seem to forget that Yamamoto was a poker player. If King was, and I don't know if he was, then he'd be a fool not to go all in. The Koreans, it turns out, were more Japanese than the Japanese. Allow me to explain.
When the Japanese were building the Bridge on the River Kwai, (which the
movie got totally wrong, BTW), they used Japanese engineers, Korean guards, and Allied slave labor. The slave laborers got starvation rations.
Unfortunately, for the Allied POWs, many of them were killed by their own
men because they were in the holds of Japanese prison ships being transported back to Japan.

I don't even know why I'm doing this...

The question here is not what manner of card games various admirals played. The thing is, King will realize if the Japanese are prepositioning troops on Guadalcanal. If too many are present, he goes for whatever location this diversion leaves uncovered.

Koreans, during this period, hated the Japanese. There are still a lot of negative perceptions of the Japanese on the penninsula (north and south), even this far removed).

And I don't see what relevance Bridge on the River Kwai has to the topic at hand. I love the movie, but it has no place in a realistic discussion of WWII (although, given the stuff you say, maybe this isn't meant to be realistic).


The Japanese would have to go after merchant shipping in order to starve
out the Australians. This is early in the war. The Tokyo Express also brought troops. The Pacific, especially around Guadalcanal, was a Japanese lake.

Except a) the Japanese did not habitually go after merchant shipping and b) the notion of starving out a continent is ludicrous (ironic if one considers the Japanese logistics at the time).

A destroyer on the Tokyo express could bring perhaps 150 troops, or a moderate amount of supplies. this logistical shoestring is no way to support a fighting force. And the Japanese only resorted to the Tokyo express because there was no other way that they could get any form of supplies to Guadalcanal.
 

Cook

Banned
And it is interesting to note that the units that were doing the chasing turned up on Guadalcanal and the north coast on New Guinea after 2/1st returned to Australia.

The value the Japanese High Command placed on Timor was so obvious that it has always amazed me that a concerted deception plan wasn't put into place in and around Darwin with dummy camps and airstrips etc to make it look like a major force was being assembled there and aimed at the DEI. Do that and you can tie down huge amounts of Japanese resources for not much more than fighter defences and a couple of engineer units.

Japanese Photo Reconnaissance assessment wasn’t the best. They repeatedly bombed Broome because they thought B-24s were operating from it. The Liberators were using Truscott instead.

So a deception plan would seem a reasonable investment.
 
At that point, the Japanese have top hit them hard to push them out. It could have happened, if the Japanese had not attacked in penny packets, but do a little reading about the speed of the Japanese buildup. It took quite some time to scrape together the troops. Actually, the IJA staff really didn't take the whole thing seriously. I seem to remember they didn't even know what the Japanese had on the island until after the invasion.
More than that, IJA SOs had to believe the threat was as serious as it was. One reason for the penny packets was disbelief the U.S. had actually put 11000 Marines ashore.
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
More than that, IJA SOs had to believe the threat was as serious as it was. One reason for the penny packets was disbelief the U.S. had actually put 11000 Marines ashore.

A very good point indeed. The U.S., contrary to the OP's beliefs, put more than enough troops and equipment ashore to destroy anything the Japanese could reasonably have emplaced on the Island.
 
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