iddt3
Donor
The unmentionable Sea Mammal!? Here?!?! You sir are brave indeed to walk upon that path.THREE U.S. destroyers had already been torpedoed and the Rueben James sunk. The U.S. electorate was already becoming accustomed to it. Despite the fact that FDR declared each time that the U.S. destroyers were peacefully going about its business and had been viciously attacked (which was not true, they were escorting British convoys,) the electorate was not showing an overt desire to go to war against Germany. In fact, they showed less ire about the Rueben James going down than the Greer being torpedoed.
If the U.S. did not go to war against Germany, there would have been a huge preponderance of landing craft available for the Pacific. If this is so, Guadalcanal and New Guinea would have been holding actions only, while the U.S. Navy took the string of islands across the middle of the Pacific. (This is what they wanted to do, but the landing craft were earmarked for Operation Torch.) With aircraft and submarines stationed on these islands, the southern part of the Japanese "empire" would have been strangled quickly. If the State Department gets the message through to the President that Unconditional Surrender is a no-no against the Japanese - which they would have - then I think we would have seen an end to the Pacific war toward the end of 1943. No need for an invasion of Japan or possibly even the Philippines and Okinawa.
Then rearmed, trained and experienced U.S. armed forces could have turned their attention to Germany, as a suitable provocation would have surely been manufactured by then.
(I did a timeline based on this concept some time ago, including the successful invasion of Great Britain by Germany, and submitted it here. Some day it may get published.)