Force Z Survives

[Cryhavoc101]

It's a real 'devil is in the details' thing, i wonder what they thought were the advantages of doing this? Or did they not even think about it? What about the land-based air groups, were they the same?

It made for a more cohesive airgroup and all the time Japan was winning which they believed was Dec 41 - June 42

In many respects it similar to the British Regimental system where by soldiers were from a particular regiment and would spend their entire service in that regiment

Great for cohesion and morale etc but the system breaks down when the army has to expand rapidly and when a given Regiments battalion suffers heavy losses

 

[Carl Schwamberger]

It's a real 'devil is in the details' thing, i wonder what they thought were the advantages of doing this? Or did they not even think about it? What about the land-based air groups, were they the same?

I spent two years of military service stationed in Japan. That was in the 1980s. Working with SDF officers I found that they were utterly baffled by our flexibility and constantly dissolving and reforming task forces. Conversely we were equally baffled by their focus, adherence to structure, and ability to operate precisely inside the lines. We hardly understood what boundaries were, they had a unerring instinct for finding them immediately.

 

[Carl Schwamberger]

...
In many respects it similar to the British Regimental system where by soldiers were from a particular regiment and would spend their entire service in that regiment

Great for cohesion and morale etc but the system breaks down when the army has to expand rapidly and when a given Regiments battalion suffers heavy losses

This led to regiments like one of the London Regiments having over 100 battalions in the Great War, but soldiers threatening to mutiny when ordered into the ranks of a battalion with a different regiments badge.

 

[Antiochus V]

So this POD is that No. 453 Squadron RAAF with its 16 Buffaloes possibly assisted by No. 488 Squadron RNZAF manages to provide a rotating CAP over Force Z as it attempted to retire to Singapore on Dec 10 1941.

The presence of Fighter planes - impacts the ability of the IJN Bombers to successfully attack the Ships (by not having the freedom to maneuver in an uncontested airspace as OTL and through losses incurred) and by early afternoon the fleet has managed to survive the onslaught undamaged or lightly damaged.

So what happens next?

Does the fleet retire out of range of another days attacks?

How does this impact Japanese operations - i.e. do they send their transports back to FIC and send warships south looking for Force Z?

Does POW and Revenge surviving then provide extra back bone to the ABDA forces?

I liked the idea enough to base a timeline around it - admittedly with a variation in the Japanese war plan. I did assume the Royal Navy kept back after this point and acted mostly as a fleet in being in the short term.

The CAP is tough to maintain if the Japanese use Zeros escort the attacks in, so it helps if Force Z manages to time its actions to be further from the Japanese airfields and closer to their own.

The immediate impact is that Japan has to maintain a larger force in the area, this is not necessarily a major problem though for Japan. Japan could take reasonably heavy aircraft losses if the bombers are not properly escorted, and this might degrade Japanese aviation capabilities slightly in the short term.

The Malayan campaign could take much longer though, one of Japan’s advantages was the ability to conduct landings to outflank British positions and that would be too risky if Force Z was in the area.

In my timeline I used the some of the ships that survived the early disasters in later actions, and assumed that British not the Dutch would take the senior command slots, simply because the Royal Navy had the only capital ships. Different leadership might lead to better performance in later surface actions.

 

[Carl Schwamberger]

All the navies had problems navigating maneuverable cruisers in DEI waters. It might seem bad idea to the admiralty to send any BB there. So tForce Z might be melded into the future Indian Ocean fleet.

 

[Cryhavoc101]

All the navies had problems navigating maneuverable cruisers in DEI waters. It might seem bad idea to the admiralty to send any BB there. So tForce Z might be melded into the future Indian Ocean fleet.

So Whitehall realizing that they have just dodged a bullet (assuming that they do and don't just write off surviving the attack as similar to experiences to those in the Med) and concluding that force Z's use as a deterrent has well and truly failed withdraw them and other heavy units to Ceylon where they and Warspite (who was fresh from her refit and on the US West coast) join Somerville's Indian Ocean force.

Possible one or both units might join Crace and Fletcher at Coral Sea / Operation Mo

And for extra virtual pie are requested by Nimitz to join TF17 and TF16 in June

 

[Carl Schwamberger]

...
Possible one or both units might join Crace and Fletcher at Coral Sea / Operation Mo

And for extra virtual pie are requested by Nimitz to join TF17 and TF16 in June

Unlikely, but the next time I play the surface battle at Midway I'll include them

 

[Jellico]

Well up thread even Churchill had decided it was time to get them out of Dodge.

Do the Americans have enough fuel to run them with the carrier fleets? They couldn't run their own BBs as much as they would like.

 

[Cryhavoc101]

Unlikely, but the next time I play the surface battle at Midway I'll include them

Would love to see the results of that if any

 

[Carl Schwamberger]

Would love to see the results of that if any

Ever time I run a 1942 naval game with the IJN the Long Lance rules.

 

[Antiochus V]

So this POD is that No. 453 Squadron RAAF with its 16 Buffaloes possibly assisted by No. 488 Squadron RNZAF manages to provide a rotating CAP over Force Z as it attempted to retire to Singapore on Dec 10 1941.

The presence of Fighter planes - impacts the ability of the IJN Bombers to successfully attack the Ships (by not having the freedom to maneuver in an uncontested airspace as OTL and through losses incurred) and by early afternoon the fleet has managed to survive the onslaught undamaged or lightly damaged.

So what happens next?

Does the fleet retire out of range of another days attacks?

How does this impact Japanese operations - i.e. do they send their transports back to FIC and send warships south looking for Force Z?

Does POW and Revenge surviving then provide extra back bone to the ABDA forces?

After thinking about this outcome (rather than how it is achieved) a bit more I thought back to computer game War in the Pacific. I only played the AI so had to let Japan have Malaya and DEI to have an interesting game, that said I found an intact Force Z provided some useful building blocks for later later fleets in terms of providing the covering force for a carrier group and some useful destroyer escorts against the hordes of Japanese submarines.

Reading a few AARs between humans I saw relatively limited success for Allied players in surface battles unless they got lucky. But what a bit more Royal Navy strength and some delays for Japan does do for the Allies does do is open up the possibility of the US carriers coming via Australia to help out. If you link up the US carriers, cruisers and destroyers with a beefed up Force Z you have a credible force a lot earlier than was historically the case. However you still run into the problem that the Allies were a bit short on land based aircraft for the early part of the war.

 

[Cryhavoc101]

Ever time I run a 1942 naval game with the IJN the Long Lance rules.

Yeah the Long lance is one of those weapons that has a better reputation than it ought to have - made even more so due to the early/mid war failure of US Torpedoes and related doctrine by caparison (IE many US Cruisers lacked torpedoes)

Most engagements using the Long Lance were relatively close range affairs within the range of US and UK 21" fish although their higher speed and larger warheads made them more lethal especially verse US Fish whose failures are well documented.

It was only the long range hits against the Dutch cruisers at 1st Java Sea that stand out (which included over shots that sank / crippled some of the transports they were supposed to be protecting)

 

[Carl Schwamberger]

Even if only a 5% hit rate the LL torpedo rules. Typically between fifty and eighty were launched in these battles. One or two hits on a Brit or US BB is not a shruggable event.

 

[Spencersj345.346]

Yeah the Long lance is one of those weapons that has a better reputation than it ought to have - made even more so due to the early/mid war failure of US Torpedoes and related doctrine by caparison (IE many US Cruisers lacked torpedoes)

Most engagements using the Long Lance were relatively close range affairs within the range of US and UK 21" fish although their higher speed and larger warheads made them more lethal especially verse US Fish whose failures are well documented.

It was only the long range hits against the Dutch cruisers at 1st Java Sea that stand out (which included over shots that sank / crippled some of the transports they were supposed to be protecting)

In fairness to the USN they weren't exactly wrong about torpedoes being hazardous to mount on a cruiser especially when you consider how bad USN torpedoes were, hence the top weight and deck space they took up was much better spent on AA guns.

 

[Zheng He]

Did the Zeroes really have the range to escort the bombers during the attack? They Rikkos weren't going against a fixed target like they were during the Guadalcanal campaign and any time spent searching, changing course, or in general not flying a direct course to the target and back means the fighters are probably flying well beyond max range.

 

[Cryhavoc101]

Even if only a 5% hit rate the LL torpedo rules. Typically between fifty and eighty were launched in these battles. One or two hits on a Brit or US BB is not a shruggable event.

I understand that out side of 'coup de grace' style torpedoing the Long lance in battle achieved a slightly better than 6% hit rate at far shorter average ranges than had been envisaged which was far below the very decisive pre war IJN expectation of 16+% (1:6) hit rate

So on average the IJN needed 16.6 launches on average to Guarantee a hit - which is great when there is a hand full of treaty Cruisers being mobbed by a superior number of IJN 'non treaty' Crusiers and DDs as was the case at 1st Java but in a larger SAG Clash launching 100 fish and only getting a handful of hits is a poor return for all of that effort.

 

[Cryhavoc101]

Did the Zeroes really have the range to escort the bombers during the attack? They Rikkos weren't going against a fixed target like they were during the Guadalcanal campaign and any time spent searching, changing course, or in general not flying a direct course to the target and back means the fighters are probably flying well beyond max range.

It has a listed range of 1000 NMs but this would not translate into a 500 NM radii of action - more likely 300 NM with some limited loiter time

What was the range from Saigon to the area?

I understood it to be around the 400 NM mark.

 

[Zheng He]

It has a listed range of 1000 NMs but this would not translate into a 500 NM radii of action - more likely 300 NM with some limited loiter time

What was the range from Saigon to the area?

I understood it to be around the 400 NM mark.

It was about 550 NM from Rabaul to Guadalcanal, but again fixed target area and they had no loiter time and a lot of guys didn't make it back. I also know the Zero's range kind of evolved over time and I'm not sure what the units based in southern FIC were comfortable with at that time. All we do know is the Japanese elected to not provide fighter escorts to the attacking aircraft despite the possibilities of land based air cover or (less likely) a carrier they didn't know about being present.

 

[Cryhavoc101]

It was about 550 NM from Rabaul to Guadalcanal, but again fixed target area and they had no loiter time and a lot of guys didn't make it back. I also know the Zero's range kind of evolved over time and I'm not sure what the units based in southern FIC were comfortable with at that time. All we do know is the Japanese elected to not provide fighter escorts to the attacking aircraft despite the possibilities of land based air cover or (less likely) a carrier they didn't know about being present.

And also as I mentioned earlier their job was to CAP the landing ships and landing zones which were attacked by British bombers and robustly defended by the Zeros

And given that their was only a finite number of them - if they are escorting Rikkos swanning around the South China Sea they are not CAP-ing the LZ and transports

What might have happened if some of the Transports were bombed!

IJA Logistics in that campaign was sketchy as it was

 

[SsgtC]

And also as I mentioned earlier their job was to CAP the landing ships and landing zones which were attacked by British bombers and robustly defended by the Zeros

And given that their was only a finite number of them - if they are escorting Rikkos swanning around the South China Sea they are not CAP-ing the LZ and transports

What might have happened if some of the Transports were bombed!

IJA Logistics in that campaign was sketchy as it was

How many transports would have to be lost to slow the Japanese enough to allow the British to stabilize their situation and possibly save Singapore? IIRC, when the British surrendered, the Japanese General was on the verge of asking for terms himself because of how poor his supply situation was