Thegn said:
the thing that bugs me about the Pearl Harbor attack was Japan's failure to follow up by landing troops.
Thegn said:
To the Japanese militarists who planned Pearl Harbor, this kind of defensive set-up would have looked eminently reasonable.
Leave off it was completely impossible, since Japan had neither the sealift nor the troops, nor would IJA agree to it.
Actually, it wouldn't have looked reasonable at all. They could read a chart, & they weren't complete morons. (Not
complete...

) They knew how long the LOCs were. And they knew how committed they were in China. It would have been a mostly IJN show, so for that reason alone, IJA would never go along. Plus they needed all the troops they were pulling out of China & Manchuria (where they'd been waiting for a chance to attack the SU again since 1939...

) for ops in SEA. Plus Japan didn't have enough shipping to sustain her economy as it was, after the IJA/IJN requisitions.
You're treating it with hindsight. Japan never intended to actually occupy Hawaii. That was never, never ever, an objective. The idea wasn't to piss off the U.S. so much she'd come over & stomp Japan flat.


The idea was, smack the Pacific Fleet hard enough it wouldn't be able to interfere while Japan took over the Dutch East Indies & built an "impregnable" barrier defense. (It never would be, since IJN ASW doctrine was a joke, but that's another thread.

)
In short, beside impossible, it was simply never considered.
BTW, "set the war back a year"? Not if the Pacific Fleet Sub Force is concentrated in San Francisco. Hawaii is closer to SF than Japan is to Hawaii, & with all the boats, staff, maintenance personnel, & repair in one place, you've maximized the transfer of information, & made upgrading all the boats much easier & quicker.
If Japan has to supply Hawaii, the Sub Force can stage into Midway (which should rapidly be upgraded as it was OTL) & shoot Japanese transports with abandon.
Plus, you've avoided splitting the command, which makes hiding the Mk 14's problems harder.

Plus you've opened the Luzon Strait, which is hell on Japanese shipping later on.


You end up actually
shortening the war compared to OTL.
