How far could Japan get towards the west coast after Pearl Harbor

This is my first so to all the evil trolls tell me of all my mistakes please be gentle


My grandfather often talked about the US navy and army was so disorganized the days after Dec 7 th 1941 that if Japan wanted to they could have kept going all the way to the west coast.

Let's say Japan had this strategy:
how far could they have gotten before they were pushed back
What areas could they have established as strongholds
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
Welcome to the board!

If the Japanese had won a decisive victory at Midway, I could potentially see some carrier-based bombing raids on West Coast cities as a political/terror tactic, but that is about it. There was no prospect whatsoever of Japanese troops landing on the West Coast, for they lacked the logistical capacity to do so.
 
Yeah, Japan isn't exactly able to sort an invasion of a great power across the largest ocean in the world. Although it could possibly get onto Hawaii and maybe Alaska given the right POD. They'd be pushed out as soon as the US got its stuff together though.
 
Welcome!!!

As for Answering your question.

Japan was already stretched and strained during its occupation of South East Asia plus China. The Empire did did not have the logistic capability to launch and maintain any invasion force on the West Coast.

D-Day took the US and the rest of the allies a very long time to prepare for the operation and that was just launching from Britian . Am invasion of the Pacific coast would several time harder and complicated.

Plus the Japanese really didn't have any reason to invade the Pacific Coast of the US the stuff they needed was im Asia.
 
What they could do is send commandos to the US proper and try to wreak havoc on the home front. Though much won't happen, it would disrupt the US logistics chain to some extent.
 
What your grandfather said was literally true, in that the Japanese could have sailed right to the West Coast if they'd wanted to, it just would have been a waste of resources that got a lot of them killed for not much purpose.

Establishing strongholds on the other hand was not on the agenda. If they'd attempted to land anyone on shore they would have been overwhelmed instantly.
 
Say that the ships were out on patrol when the attack came. They were unprepared and were sunk at sea (where they couldn't be raised up). The Japanese then attacked Hawaii destroying Naval bases and destroying the Fuel storage there.

The Japanese then go back to restock and attack a month later with soldiers to capture Hawaii. They take heavy losses but secure the islands. The Japanese use Hawaii then to strike at the West Coast of America and land Commandos on the shore.

With the USA blocked from the Pacific for the time being the Japanese manage to get further maybe securing PNG in the south but can't advance too much more because of logistics.

By 1942-43 Hawaii is Recaptured and by about 1946-97 the Japanese surrender to the Americans (who might have to blast the Japanese with Nukes to advance in some areas)
 
Say that the ships were out on patrol when the attack came. They were unprepared and were sunk at sea (where they couldn't be raised up). The Japanese then attacked Hawaii destroying Naval bases and destroying the Fuel storage there.

The Japanese then go back to restock and attack a month later with soldiers to capture Hawaii. They take heavy losses but secure the islands. The Japanese use Hawaii then to strike at the West Coast of America and land Commandos on the shore.

With the USA blocked from the Pacific for the time being the Japanese manage to get further maybe securing PNG in the south but can't advance too much more because of logistics.

By 1942-43 Hawaii is Recaptured and by about 1946-97 the Japanese surrender to the Americans (who might have to blast the Japanese with Nukes to advance in some areas)

but what resources are they restocking with? They have been in china since 1937 and it has been bleeding them out. As it was Pear harbor was down in desperation.

Also I would like to see how Bill Clinton fight the Japanese :D
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
Welcome! :)

They could have gotten here. Couldn't have gotten home. They would have, at minimum, lost all the escorts, and probably at least two carriers, simply due to fuel running out. The West Coast was disorganized, it also had several hundred attack/strategic bombers and an equal number of fighters, including brand new P-40s and P-38s.

Long way to go to die.
 
Welcome! :)

They could have gotten here. Couldn't have gotten home. They would have, at minimum, lost all the escorts, and probably at least two carriers, simply due to fuel running out. The West Coast was disorganized, it also had several hundred attack/strategic bombers and an equal number of fighters, including brand new P-40s and P-38s.

Long way to go to die.

Seconding the welcome to this site RabbitHunter. :cool:
BTW, CalBear, on top of being a moderator, is also one of our resident WWII experts so if you ever have questions, or wanna write a TL, he's a go-to person for that sorta thing. :D

Hope you enjoy your time here. :)
 
Welcome! :)

They could have gotten here. Couldn't have gotten home. They would have, at minimum, lost all the escorts, and probably at least two carriers, simply due to fuel running out. The West Coast was disorganized, it also had several hundred attack/strategic bombers and an equal number of fighters, including brand new P-40s and P-38s.

Long way to go to die.

But how plausible would it be for the Japanese to send commando teams to the west coast to cause mischief? Not overly successful, but enough to give the US a headache.
 
This is my first so to all the evil trolls tell me of all my mistakes please be gentle


My grandfather often talked about the US navy and army was so disorganized the days after Dec 7 th 1941 that if Japan wanted to they could have kept going all the way to the west coast.

Let's say Japan had this strategy:
how far could they have gotten before they were pushed back
What areas could they have established as strongholds

Realistically Japan just didn't have the logistical strength to push anything beyond raids on the West Coast. Several years ago I did read this book - The Moscow Option http://www.amazon.com/The-Moscow-Option-David-Downing/dp/185367463X
One of the changes in this OTL is that Japan realizes that the US has broken their codes and they use Midway as bait to draw out the fleet with the expectations that the US will be there. So basically you have the Japanese knowing their naval codes are broken and setting a trap and the US not realizing that the Japanese know the US is reading their messages. It was a interesting read with the Japanese carriers attacking the West Coast in a Raid and eventually strike to the Panama Canal. The thing is that the Japanese fleet is kind of like a Katana, it has a really sharp edge but cannot take a lot of abuse. Once that katana starts to get knicked everything starts to go downhill really quickly.
 
But how plausible would it be for the Japanese to send commando teams to the west coast to cause mischief? Not overly successful, but enough to give the US a headache.

The Japanese did get a submarine to the West coast at least once that I know of, it lobbed a few shells at some coastal oil derricks in California IIRC, and caused almost no damage. If they can get a submarine there, they could land a half dozen or so commandos (or equivilent thereof). That said, the only significant result will be to make life for Japanese Americans on the West coast even more miserable then it already was.
 
It would probably be more practical to land spies and keep an eye on things in the US rather than Commando raids. A few dozen men probably won't cut it. It would be more like pin-pricks rather than disruption on a massive scale.
Say that the ships were out on patrol when the attack came. They were unprepared and were sunk at sea (where they couldn't be raised up). The Japanese then attacked Hawaii destroying Naval bases and destroying the Fuel storage there.

The Japanese then go back to restock and attack a month later with soldiers to capture Hawaii. They take heavy losses but secure the islands. The Japanese use Hawaii then to strike at the West Coast of America and land Commandos on the shore.

With the USA blocked from the Pacific for the time being the Japanese manage to get further maybe securing PNG in the south but can't advance too much more because of logistics.

By 1942-43 Hawaii is Recaptured and by about 1946-97 the Japanese surrender to the Americans (who might have to blast the Japanese with Nukes to advance in some areas)

Fantasy I'm afraid. Japan attacking Pearl Harbour was on the edge of it's operational range, they were running on fumes when they arrived back. They can't capture Hawaii it's forces are occupied elsewhere, it is on an extremely tight budget and the element of surprise is long gone. The goal wasn't to capture Hawaii or engage the US in a drawn out fight in their own back yard, it was to knock out the US Fleet while they captured the oil rich DEI.
 
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My grandfather often talked about the US navy and army was so disorganized the days after Dec 7 th 1941 that if Japan wanted to they could have kept going all the way to the west coast.

Let's say Japan had this strategy:
how far could they have gotten before they were pushed back
What areas could they have established as strongholds

I just did about half an hour of fiddling with numbers. Keep in mind that this proposal is in the "no way" categorey.

Assuming an invasion of 10 divisions, you're looking at about 2.5 million tons of invasion shipping, plus another million tons in the supply chain. There's 4 million tons available, and the navy takes 1.8, so the requirement for California means no operations anywhere else, no supply of China.

Your oil cost for one year between supply and warships might be about 4.5 million tons (ie, 75% of the entire Japanese strategic reserve).

There would be no possiblity of resupply from the NEI, because there can be no offensive to the south.

I believe the USN's strategic oil reserves in California were about 40 million tons. I think California's indiginenous production was about 20 million tons per year. Since the entire Japanese reserve is exhausted for the offensive, you need to capture or produce 5 million tons per year in California, or you will run out of oil.

So, your plan of campaign would be to capture the USN's strategic reserves as intact as possible and then base your fleet in California. So, before invading California, it would be a good idea to see where those reserves and production were located and whether it was possible to capture them.
 
Fantasy I'm afraid. Japan attacking Pearl Harbour was on the edge of it's operational range, they were running on fumes when they arrived back. They can't capture Hawaii it's forces are occupied elsewhere, it is on an extremely tight budget and the element of surprise is long gone. The goal wasn't to capture Hawaii or engage the US in a drawn out fight in their own back yard, it was to knock out the US Fleet while they captured the oil rich DEI.
You're absolutely right about what the goal was, there was never any real operation planned to capture Hawaii.

However, they could have spent more time near Hawaii if they really wanted to. It's true that the Kido Butai was on fumes when they returned to Japan, but that's because they sortied from Hitokappu Bay. Militarist Japan actually had an excellent fleet anchorage at Truk, which is only half as far from Hawaii.

Of course, there is a reason they didn't sail from Truk in OTL. By coming from the north, they could attack from an unexpected direction. They avoided busy shipping lanes, to preserve the element of surprise. These are all compelling arguments. I'm not sure why the IJN would decide to launch a sustained, days-long attack, instead of a surprise raid from an unexpected direction. But if for some reason they did so, they could have pulled it off.
 
Here's a completely screwball idea that has no grounding in Japanese tactical and strategic war plans whatsoever, but what if, instead of attacking Pearl Harbor with a huge force at the onset of hostilities, they wildly divided their forces operating in the central/eastern Pacific? What if they mined the approaches to Pearl and the Panama Canal with mine laying submarines, stationed fleet submarines off Puget Sound, Frisco, and sent a smaller carrier task force (say the two Shokakus with the necessary supply train and escorts) all the way across the Pacific to strike at San Diego (the naval facilities) and Los Angeles (civic and harbor) just AFTER the declaration of war was delivered? What if another task group (Hiryu and Soryu, lets say) participated in a different Hawaii Operation at the same time, with a more limited mission intended to strike at any US surface ships that might have sortied - or failing that

A. Is this even possible logistically?
B Is there any possibility the task forces and sub groups could have gone undetected?
C. Is it possible this combined strike and prepositioning could have damaged the USN as much as Pearl Harbor?
D. What is the chance the carriers could have made it back to the western Pacific.
E Does this just mean that the Pacific War would be over by early 1943 with a US victory?
 
I just did about half an hour of fiddling with numbers. Keep in mind that this proposal is in the "no way" categorey.

Assuming an invasion of 10 divisions, you're looking at about 2.5 million tons of invasion shipping, plus another million tons in the supply chain. There's 4 million tons available, and the navy takes 1.8, so the requirement for California means no operations anywhere else, no supply of China.

Your oil cost for one year between supply and warships might be about 4.5 million tons (ie, 75% of the entire Japanese strategic reserve).

There would be no possiblity of resupply from the NEI, because there can be no offensive to the south.

I believe the USN's strategic oil reserves in California were about 40 million tons. I think California's indiginenous production was about 20 million tons per year. Since the entire Japanese reserve is exhausted for the offensive, you need to capture or produce 5 million tons per year in California, or you will run out of oil.

So, your plan of campaign would be to capture the USN's strategic reserves as intact as possible and then base your fleet in California. So, before invading California, it would be a good idea to see where those reserves and production were located and whether it was possible to capture them.

Damn you, Glenn! You planted the seeds of a oh so silly ASB scenario in my mind. :eek::D
 
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