Well, you can probably speed things up by killing off Mac (or, I'll be less morbid, removing him from command) ASAP so we avoid the needless diversion to the Philippines...![]()
POD no later than Dec 6,1941 and Japan has to surrender unconditionally.
Well I imagine a good start is the Kido Butai finding themselves within gunnery range of the Pacific Fleet out on exercises at dawn on December 7th.
You would expect the Kido Butai to spot them first though. Maybe if all their spotter planes were shot down before they can get a message off?
How good are those spotter planes going to be at spotting ships in the dark? At any rate, Six carriers, two fast battleships, and two heavy cruisers are going to die extremely fast if the sun comes up just as eight American Battleships stumble into range of what is obviously a sneak attack on their anchorage.
Will this however result in an unconditional surrender? With a reversal as early as that, how are the chances that the Japanese are thrown so badly off their shoestring timetable that they start to consider to negotiate a peace? I do not necessarily mean right on the spot, but possibly down the line.True, if they are lucky and catch the Japanese flat footed it is going to go very bad for them. They might be able to take a BB down with them but if they are in 16" gun range those carriers are going down.
The opening campaign was very tightly planned and on a shoestring. If something goes massively wrong early on, it could seriously undermine the whole offensive.
The big problem is that, even with an earlier success, unconditional surrender probably requires the bomb (which won't be ready before OTL) or an invasion of the Home Islands* (which will also probably delay things quite a bit, especially since a less threatening Japan increases the argument to focus on Europe, and I doubt even the US can pull off both Overlord and Downfall in the same year).
*Soviet intervention won't happen before Germany is defeated, which is unlikely to be sped up much.
^^^^^^this
Mark XIV torpedoes that work like designed from the get go would go a long way to putting them further behind then they were IOTL. Being able to sink ships from day 1 makes everything speed up.