[I]Yorktown[/I] is sunk in the Coral Sea

[Robert]

If the battle goes as it did in OTL, Enterprise dive bombers will sink Akagi and Kaga. The torpedo bombers from Hornet and Enterprise would have brought the Japanese CAP down to sea level. The lack of the Yorktown Torpedo Bombers and Fighters would mean that it's likely the Enterprise Torpedo Bomber squadron would have been wiped as instead of having four survivors.

The Japanese would have had the Soryu along with they Hiryu. But would they have been able to launch a strike right away. Remember, the Hiryu's dive bomber squadron followed the Yorktown Bombers back to their carrier. It's possible that either the Soryu's or Hiryu's first strike might have found the carrier, but if they hadn't they would have been forced to wait for the Soryu's scout plane, whose radio didn't work, to return with the location of the American carrier.

Had the Japanese attacked, they the Hornet and Enterprise might have been attacked and damaged as was the Yorktown. Had they not attacked, then the Enterprise and Hornet would have launched a second attack that would have destroyed Hiryu and Soryu. Given the fact that Admiral Spruance would be the most likely commander to the Task Force (Fletcher unavailable because of the sinking of the Yorktown would have prevented his timely return the Pearl Harbor, one way or the other), an attack would have taken place.

 

[phx1138]

Feels good, doesn't it...

Especially here, where I find so many people who know so much more about so much stuff than me.

Okay I am only "some guy on the internet"...This is why I think it is unlikely the Japanese can take Midway in June 1942.

This is what I mean...

Given you're even remotely right (& I think you're well past "remotely"), & given how hard IJN had it at Wake, with far, far less opposition, a Midway landing is going to be a fiasco. Which in the long run is good for the U.S. (And we're back to how hard it is to make the outcome better for Japan..)

Thats basically what their tactic was going to have to be though, they had no landing ships, they could only dream of LVTs, no ship to shore radios, no experience in gunfire support for troops ashore. Due to the reefs the Japanese infantry would have had to slog about 200 yards through water up to their waist if not necks under an absolute hail of gunfire. The results would have been a massacre. And thats not counting the effects of gunfire on what ever they would carry the men to get that close in.

Aside: as I understand it, IJN doctrine was contrary to supplying gunfire support.

Would, in 1942, sending Enterprise and Hornet in something like this be "calculated risk"? That's considerably dicier with one more carrier down even if the Essex class will be available in the long run.

I'd note, incidentally, that OTL was a beautiful - from what I know/remember - example of how to take those sorts of instructions. Enough damage to be worth it, and only Yorktown lost to show for it.

My understanding is, knowing he was 4 decks to 3, Nimitz considered it a fairly even fight. (He didn't seem to appreciate Midway actually gave him the edge: Fletcher could afford ship losses & recover his aircraft there, & Nagumo couldn't, plus Midway gave Nimitz a priceless advantage in recce Nagumo couldn't dream of.) With Yorktown absent, the question I have is, does Nimitz get Sara or Wasp? IIRC, Sara was still under refit; could she have been ready in time? If not, could Wasp be spared? (I'd say yes.) So we're back to OTL with only the names changed, essentially.

It then becomes, how does the quality of the airgroups & different USN leadership change the outcome? Does adding Wasp mean Spruance doesn't end up as SOPA? (IDK. I also don't know if Fletcher would have been SOPA absent Yorktown, presuming he isn't KIA.) If he doesn't, we get a potential disaster for USN after Nagumo has his head handed to him: pursuit into Yamato's guns, at night. This might actually be the best possible outcome Japan could hope for.

Not ideal (as in, Yorktown might have been savable if memory serves), but a well played hand.

She was. If she'd been under tow immediately on being abandoned in the first place, she'd have been at least 50mi from where I-168 found & sank her. IMO, that's far enough to save her. (Finding even a crippled CV 50mi away by periscope alone isn't something I'd want to try, if I wanted any chance of getting home. It's hard enough to track a crip even with access to Ultra & a lot of boats at your disposal, as the USN effort to pin down Shokaku after Coral Sea proves.)

That second one seems to be a particularly bad waste of fuel. What's the point of sailing out with a vast fleet if much of it won't actually be concentrated?

Standard IJN practise for the duration... And I've often wondered why they kept doing something proven so stupid, even after it was proven stupid, so many times...

A battle of Midway where the battleships are used, as well as the carriers, might end particularly nastily for the Americans

Carriers unable to reply effectively to big guns do not do well at all.

See Yamato above.

phx1138: I think you overestimate the odds against Japan doing better (for a while, certainly not winning)

Aside Romulan intervention, I don't foresee victory. And I don't exclude some minor improvements, small enough people on this site would notice but nobody else would. Really big, "make a movie about it" changes, no.

1) Considerably better Japanese leadership. And I mean in regards to the decisions on focusing maniacally on pilot quality and so on, not tactics or even war strategy.

2) "And King, Nimitz, and Spruance all get killed in the same car crash." level destruction of the American leadership.

Either one appears to require ASB-level changes. (For senior USN leaders to be killed in the same plane crash, maybe... especially given what happened to English. Even then, it's a long shot.)

I did take the options I thought most likely to have visible (to non-specialist) & credible changes; I have no doubt there are others involving stray bomb fragments & such that could readily occur. (Halsey could fall off a ladder aboard Enterprise. So could Spruance. MacArthur could have tripped boarding that PT boat & drowned. Or been killed by a Japanese sniper.)

a considerably uglier war for the Allies (A-bombs a'coming or no A-bombs) to slog across the Pacific without the good leadership of the men who the US Navy had OTL.

Agreed. It's a bit hard to know if Kimmel would've been worse than Nimitz, TBH. He wasn't an idiot...& TBH, IDK enough about the character of other possible replacements to judge.

Sheesh. Why is it that Japan is so riddled with the kind of delusions that ONLY a power with superior resources can afford but a power where trained manpower is precious has to purge at all costs?

That is the perennial question. And not only limits of trained manpower: limits in everything.

To be fair, tho, this is a bit like Britain taking on the 17th Century Dutch after just coming out of the 12th Century. Japan had just sooo much catching up to do...

That, IMO, is more fatal to its odds of victory than the industrial weight of the US.

Agreed. It really wasn't about the U.S. power as much as about the abysmal decisions Japan's military leadership made, & those stem from a fundamental lack of understanding of what they were getting into: not industrial power as much as scope of operations & grand strategic intentions. Neither Russia nor China had the breadth of strategic options or aims the Brits or U.S. would in the Pacific, nor the experience with blue water warfare. Japan was fighting with a brown water navy & mentality, & a continental army & POV governing. Can you say "doomed before it started"?

But it's only possibility of facing that is extremely, in a word, efficient use of limited assets. No underdog has ever won by playing brave-but-stupid.

I honestly don't see how Japan could ever have achieved her grand strategic aims by simple force. The "China Question" could have been settled in 1937 by cutting a deal with Chiang IMO. Anything drastically different, Japan is ruined.

 

[Elfwine]

My understanding is, knowing he was 4 decks to 3, Nimitz considered it a fairly even fight. (He didn't seem to appreciate Midway actually gave him the edge: Fletcher could afford ship losses & recover his aircraft there, & Nagumo couldn't, plus Midway gave Nimitz a priceless advantage in recce Nagumo couldn't dream of.) With Yorktown absent, the question I have is, does Nimitz get Sara or Wasp? IIRC, Sara was still under refit; could she have been ready in time? If not, could Wasp be spared? (I'd say yes.) So we're back to OTL with only the names changed, essentially.

It then becomes, how does the quality of the airgroups & different USN leadership change the outcome? Does adding Wasp mean Spruance doesn't end up as SOPA? (IDK. I also don't know if Fletcher would have been SOPA absent Yorktown, presuming he isn't KIA.) If he doesn't, we get a potential disaster for USN after Nagumo has his head handed to him: pursuit into Yamato's guns, at night. This might actually be the best possible outcome Japan could hope for.

Yeah. Anything better would take significantly better Japanese decisions, on levels that are damn hard to alter (see below).

She was. If she'd been under tow immediately on being abandoned in the first place, she'd have been at least 50mi from where I-168 found & sank her. IMO, that's far enough to save her. (Finding even a crippled CV 50mi away by periscope alone isn't something I'd want to try, if I wanted any chance of getting home. It's hard enough to track a crip even with access to Ultra & a lot of boats at your disposal, as the USN effort to pin down Shokaku after Coral Sea proves.)

Too bad, then. Not a big thing in the context of the war, but a sad thing in the human scale context.

Standard IJN practise for the duration... And I've often wondered why they kept doing something proven so stupid, even after it was proven stupid, so many times...

See Yamato above.

Sheer bloody-mindedness, I suspect. Japan's plans, from what little I've studied, boil down to "When enemy rolls over, stab in the belly."

Aside Romulan intervention, I don't foresee victory. And I don't exclude some minor improvements, small enough people on this site would notice but nobody else would. Really big, "make a movie about it" changes, no.

Yeah. I think there might be room for - at best - a less costly for Japan version of your comment about the USN chasing into the night to be battleshiped to death.

Either one appears to require ASB-level changes. (For senior USN leaders to be killed in the same plane crash, maybe... especially given what happened to English. Even then, it's a long shot.)

I did take the options I thought most likely to have visible (to non-specialist) & credible changes; I have no doubt there are others involving stray bomb fragments & such that could readily occur. (Halsey could fall off a ladder aboard Enterprise. So could Spruance. MacArthur could have tripped boarding that PT boat & drowned. Or been killed by a Japanese sniper.)

Maybe not ASB, but well pre-war for #1, and #2 would be a level of unfortunate and stupid to make the books for all time.

Knocking out any one is almost easy, knocking out all three would take steering events towards it.

Besides, don't we want to have MacArthur break his damn neck?

Agreed. It's a bit hard to know if Kimmel would've been worse than Nimitz, TBH. He wasn't an idiot...& TBH, IDK enough about the character of other possible replacements to judge.

Yeah. I have the suspicion that they'd be second string, but not so much so as to change things drastically. A few more blunders, but the war's course is not going to waver any more than it did OTL.

That is the perennial question. And not only limits of trained manpower: limits in everything.

To be fair, tho, this is a bit like Britain taking on the 17th Century Dutch after just coming out of the 12th Century. Japan had just sooo much catching up to do...

Yeah. Although Japan's ideas seem to have taken even longer to catch up than materials.

They did build a fine carrier fleet, even if replacements were out.

Agreed. It really wasn't about the U.S. power as much as about the abysmal decisions Japan's military leadership made, & those stem from a fundamental lack of understanding of what they were getting into: not industrial power as much as scope of operations & grand strategic intentions. Neither Russia nor China had the breadth of strategic options or aims the Brits or U.S. would in the Pacific, nor the experience with blue water warfare. Japan was fighting with a brown water navy & mentality, & a continental army & POV governing. Can you say "doomed before it started"?

No kidding. That, at best, is a recipe for a horrifically costly war for Japan, and at worst a curbstomp - by its enemies.

Would love to hear more on the brown water navy and mentality bit (PM me?). Not as relates to this thread specifically, just as a general . . wtf was Japan thinking and why.

They weren't idiots in the sense of just plain ordinary stupid, they were idiots of the sort produced by gross ignorance.

I honestly don't see how Japan could ever have achieved her grand strategic aims by simple force. The "China Question" could have been settled in 1937 by cutting a deal with Chiang IMO. Anything drastically different, Japan is ruined.

Me neither. Even if - somehow - you knock the US out, taking China (as badly lead as it may have been) is just such a huge task as to exhaust Japanese resources.

 

[phx1138]

Yeah. Anything better would take significantly better Japanese decisions, on levels that are damn hard to alter.

With that, I entirely agree. One thing might do it before the war starts: have the mooted assassination of Yamamoto succeed. Thus, no Pearl Harbor attack. Nor Midway. Probably, IJN prefers the SWP strategy (IMO, the better one).

Too bad, then. Not a big thing in the context of the war, but a sad thing in the human scale context.

I count it a stupid, avoidable mistake. I agree, the impact on the war probably wasn't huge. It was a waste.

Sheer bloody-mindedness, I suspect. Japan's plans, from what little I've studied, boil down to "When enemy rolls over, stab in the belly."

My sense is, there's a depressingly bad level of training & education for senior officers. And, yes, that description of Japan's planning is pretty good. (I wish I'd thought of it.)

Yeah. I think there might be room for - at best - a less costly for Japan version of your comment about the USN chasing into the night to be battleshiped to death.

There's room for saving Hiryu, maybe, too--just. IMO, it's most probable one U.S. CV is lost, but there is room, just, for sinking 2, if Nagumo's birds don't just stumble on a crip, as they did with Yorktown, but find an undamaged CV. (I count the odds long, here, but WTF, we're giving Japan the good rolls.)

Maybe not ASB, but well pre-war for #1, and #2 would be a level of unfortunate and stupid to make the books for all time.

Agreed. For #1, it seems to me, you have to go back about as far as the Restoration, perhaps farther: the issues are deep & systemic AFAICT.

Knocking out any one is almost easy, knocking out all three would take steering events towards it.

At a stroke, yes. Given aviation was pretty crude by modern standards, & given they often had to fly to distant stations, fatal accidents aren't impossible, or even improbable IMO. Nor are car or train accidents, or falls in the bathtub, or even polio or meningitis, out of the question.

Besides, don't we want to have MacArthur break his damn neck?

Yeah, but I'm flexible.

Yeah. I have the suspicion that they'd be second string, but not so much so as to change things drastically. A few more blunders, but the war's course is not going to waver any more than it did OTL.

Agreed. Recall what somebody said: the war went very close to the Orange plan. It would take a perfect dimwit to screw up real badly.

Yeah. Although Japan's ideas seem to have taken even longer to catch up than materials.

Agreed. That's one I don't get: why Japan was so slow to change. Something about homogeneity, I think, & lack of exposure to outside cultures & threats. (Compare Britain.)

They did build a fine carrier fleet, even if replacements were out.

True. Geography bit them: unlike Britain, Japan couldn't expand shipbuilding.

No kidding. That, at best, is a recipe for a horrifically costly war for Japan, and at worst a curbstomp - by its enemies.

And exactly what she got. Which should not have been a surprise.

Me neither. Even if - somehow - you knock the US out, taking China (as badly lead as it may have been) is just such a huge task as to exhaust Japanese resources.

My sense is, Japan would have been satisfied with Manchuria & a guarantee of energy (oil) resources. Why that proved insufficient is a question I can't answer. Once it becomes insufficient, you're on the OTL path with very few forks in the road I can see.

There is one, tho IDK how big the difference is: smarter Brit-U.S. diplomacy keeping Japan out of the Tripartite Pact. After that...

Having realized I posted these on another thread... here are some thoughts.

What happens if MacArthur stays in P.I.? (Or breaks his neck.) The answer is, the war against Japan is shorter... It frees the Luzon/Formosa Straits to subs from Hawaii. It encourages moving all subs to Hawaii (& none to Oz). And it means no P.I. obsession & no 6mo delay to conquer P.I. Just for a start...

Want longer? Figure out how to put Ralph Christie in at ComSubPac after English's death (or sooner). And keep Fife in charge in Oz. Or kill Lockwood. Or (since Brainbin is always asking why I'm so bloodthirsty), just have Christie selected over him as ComSubPac. Better still, have even more boats in Oz & Britain. (More prewar in P.I., then diverted to Oz, better still.)

Something else Japan should've done, before launching MO, was execute the Kokoda Trail op.

 

[Smaug]

Midway would have died on the vine if they had won. No japanese merchant marine...js

 

[BlondieBC]

IOTL, the U.S.S. Yorktown was very nearly sunk in the Battle of the Coral Sea.

What if she actually had sunk?

Even with the Yorktown sunk, the USA will still defend Midway with a plan pretty similar to OTL - Same basic land defense plan. Same basic air aviation plan. We have a potential to introduce a lot of butterflies in the carrier portion of the plan. We can get something almost identical to OTL carrier actions to a plan where all the air battles are different. Something as simple as the carriers launching a different scout plan can move the carriers location by 10 miles and change the sequence of air engagements. So we have to look at the forces available, so lets take the easy part to harder parts.

1) USA land defense are adequate to defend Midway.

2) Japan will start the first few hours like OTL. Not knocking out the runway, land based planes having low effectiveness. Same scouting reports.

3) Now we can assume the luck still breaks the same way and is not butterflied away. IMO, this is the least likely scenario. The USA should lose only one carrier attack twice. Japan should lose 3 on the initial attack. We will not get the last carrier, since with 1/3 fewer carrier planes, the USA will be largely out of planes before this event towards the end of the day. Huge USA win that will cripple the Japanese due to so many lost pilots and airplane support crews.

4) Or we get a more common fight. The Japanese either find the USA earlier with the scouting pattern or the USA planes arrive in more sporadic manner. We then need to look at balance of forces. The Japanese have twice as many carrier planes and they are better overall mostly due to pilots. Clean Japan win. USA loses 2 carriers, Japan loses 0-2. It changes the TL a lot, and the discussions gets quite long. We have had several threads on this topic in the last few months, so I will not repeat it all. You end up with issues such as does the USA pull more ship from Atlantic, does the Solomon Island campaign still happen, and Central versus SW Pacific strategy.

 

[BlondieBC]

Is there a carrier in the Atlantic that could transit the canal and be in play within the month after Coral Sea?

Saratoga arrived 2 days after the battle, IIRC - could any time have been shaved off that if she had not stopped at San Diego but instead headed straight for Pearl, and done the loading of food, munitions, an air group, etc., in Hawaii?

If Stanhope Ring just follows Waldron (in company with Hornet's F4Fs), knowing that there will be plenty of Japanese carriers to go around, would Yorktown's air group be missed?

Midway was a max effort event, so I would presume there is a good reason the Saratoga did not arrive for the battle. Likely, some of the supplies needed was not at Pearl.

 

[Elfwine]

With that, I entirely agree. One thing might do it before the war starts: have the mooted assassination of Yamamoto succeed. Thus, no Pearl Harbor attack. Nor Midway. Probably, IJN prefers the SWP strategy (IMO, the better one).

Not sure that's necessarily all a plus, but it sounds good.

And SWP? Me no good at abbreviation.

My sense is, there's a depressingly bad level of training & education for senior officers. And, yes, that description of Japan's planning is pretty good. (I wish I'd thought of it.)

It would explain bone-headed things like "land a few thousand troops with no support" for Midway. However secondary actually taking Midway was, the force committed to it should have been at least enough to do more than kill off a few good men (and maybe a few Marines if it gets lucky ).

There's room for saving Hiryu, maybe, too--just. IMO, it's most probable one U.S. CV is lost, but there is room, just, for sinking 2, if Nagumo's birds don't just stumble on a crip, as they did with Yorktown, but find an undamaged CV. (I count the odds long, here, but WTF, we're giving Japan the good rolls.)

Yeah. Best case scenario for Japan would probably be something like this:

Roughly even carrier losses (both sides lose 2), get rid of Spruance, and get out to try it again against sally #2.

But that requires Spruance to be clutching the idiot ball or a string of 20s for Japan if not both. Not technically ASB, but if things are going far south enough for the USN to really get the terms Japan wants, Spruance will exercise the better part of valor. So more believable - just - to have it be a bloodbath for both.

Agreed. For #1, it seems to me, you have to go back about as far as the Restoration, perhaps farther: the issues are deep & systemic AFAICT.

Yeah. I'm not sure why, but you don't develop that doctrine ("when enemy rolls over, stab in the belly') without some grostesque misunderstandings of how war works.

Not even specifically about modern war - that's the kind of delusion someone who hasn't fought serious opposition in way too long would have.

At a stroke, yes. Given aviation was pretty crude by modern standards, & given they often had to fly to distant stations, fatal accidents aren't impossible, or even improbable IMO. Nor are car or train accidents, or falls in the bathtub, or even polio or meningitis, out of the question.

Yeah. All three getting that would be really, really unlikely, even separately, but not technically impossible.

Agreed. Recall what somebody said: the war went very close to the Orange plan. It would take a perfect dimwit to screw up real badly.

And fortunately for the USN, King was not a naval MacArthur.

That might be the level of dimwittery necessary for Japan to actually have a meaningful looking chance of a different war. Not a win - the odds are too long - but the ACW as the bloodiest war in US history won't hold that title in this WWII.

Agreed. That's one I don't get: why Japan was so slow to change. Something about homogeneity, I think, & lack of exposure to outside cultures & threats. (Compare Britain.)

True. Geography bit them: unlike Britain, Japan couldn't expand shipbuilding.

Lack of resources, or some other problem? (on shipbuilding)

My sense is, Japan would have been satisfied with Manchuria & a guarantee of energy (oil) resources. Why that proved insufficient is a question I can't answer. Once it becomes insufficient, you're on the OTL path with very few forks in the road I can see.

Japan seems to have tried to cram a couple centuries worth of expansion into a couple decades.

Something else Japan should've done, before launching MO, was execute the Kokoda Trail op.

How come? Not arguing, but you've studied this more than I have.

And why do I suck so bad at abbreviations?

 

[Alternate History Geek]

And SWP? Me no good at abbreviation.

Southwest Pacific.

 

[The Sandman]

A question nobody seems to have considered yet: if Yorktown is sunk at Coral Sea along with Lexington, might that keep Shokaku from her OTL date with the repair yards and keep Zuikaku's air group from being butchered? If so, that gives the Japanese another two fleet carriers to play with.

 

[HMS Warspite]

Even with the Yorktown sunk, the USA will still defend Midway with a plan pretty similar to OTL - Same basic land defense plan. Same basic air aviation plan. We have a potential to introduce a lot of butterflies in the carrier portion of the plan. We can get something almost identical to OTL carrier actions to a plan where all the air battles are different. Something as simple as the carriers launching a different scout plan can move the carriers location by 10 miles and change the sequence of air engagements. So we have to look at the forces available, so lets take the easy part to harder parts.

1) USA land defense are adequate to defend Midway.

2) Japan will start the first few hours like OTL. Not knocking out the runway, land based planes having low effectiveness. Same scouting reports.

3) Now we can assume the luck still breaks the same way and is not butterflied away. IMO, this is the least likely scenario. The USA should lose only one carrier attack twice. Japan should lose 3 (Not possible, as all of VB-6 and VS-6 strick Akagi and Kaga only. You will still need VB-5 of Yorktown to get the third innitial kill.) on the initial attack. We will not get the last carrier, since with 1/3 (actually 1/2, as Hornett messed up in the OTL) fewer carrier planes, the USA will be largely out of planes before this event towards the end of the day. Huge USA win that will cripple the Japanese due to so many lost pilots and airplane support crews.

With a bit of luck USS Enterprise and USS Hornett make it out unscatched, although the quick response of Yamaguchi resulted in the CarDiv-2 airstrike to be in the air to follow USN bombers back to their ships, which nw were all in one TF, not two as in the OTL, meaning his larger than OTL strikegroup (both aircraft carriers Soryu and Hiryu remained after the VB-6 and VS-6 attack) would likely find and strike Spruance's TF-17, with simmilar results likely as only Enterprise had fighters left, due to the ones of Hornet having splashed, after failing to find their target. The larger IJN group, with more fighters and more experienced pilots, will certainly score a hit or so on the US ships. (hopefully no fatal ones) The second strike with torpedoplanes will follow soon, given Yamaguchi's nature to strike as soon as possible, meaning as soon as he could send planes in the air. As the Yorktown Class was not very well designed to take underwater hits, the results of a torpedostrike on the TF-17 would decide the outcome of the entire battle.

4) Or we get a more common fight. The Japanese either find the USA earlier with the scouting pattern or the USA planes arrive in more sporadic manner. We then need to look at balance of forces. The Japanese have twice as many carrier planes and they are better overall mostly due to pilots. Clean Japan win. USA loses 2 carriers, Japan loses 0-2. It changes the TL a lot, and the discussions gets quite long. We have had several threads on this topic in the last few months, so I will not repeat it all. You end up with issues such as does the USA pull more ship from Atlantic, does the Solomon Island campaign still happen, and Central versus SW Pacific strategy.

The USA already had committed to start operation Torch in the main wartheater, and FDR was certainly not the kind of leader to change all in case of a US defeat at Midway. Europe simply was the more important battlefront adn needed all attention. The USA could not affort to anger its own allies, especially when the whole future of the free (and democratic) world was at stake. The Sollomon sideshow had to wait, if necessary, although it would possibly be done anyway, simply to learn the art of island hopping warfare and to twart the Japanese, wherever possible. (possibly at a smaller scale, with fewer forces involved, but still continued.)

 

[BlondieBC]

The USA already had committed to start operation Torch in the main wartheater, and FDR was certainly not the kind of leader to change all in case of a US defeat at Midway. Europe simply was the more important battlefront adn needed all attention. The USA could not affort to anger its own allies, especially when the whole future of the free (and democratic) world was at stake. The Sollomon sideshow had to wait, if necessary, although it would possibly be done anyway, simply to learn the art of island hopping warfare and to twart the Japanese, wherever possible. (possibly at a smaller scale, with fewer forces involved, but still continued.)

Decisions were changed all the time, even by FDR. Given a big enough defeat, he might move ships or change plans. And even if Torch had to happen because of the election, there are other USA ships in the Atlantic on other duties. These could be reassigned. Or Torch could be scaled back with only landings in Morocco, where the land units had to advance overland longer distances towards Tunisia. Or after Torch, you might slow the pace of operations and provide less naval support in the Med. Or one might send more USAAF units to the Pacific. Or more land units. It is out of the complicated set of possible butterflies that one has to estimate what might have happened.

By far the least likely scenario is that after losing 2-3 additional USA carriers and Japan having 2-4 more carriers (net change of 4-7 carriers), that the USA makes no adjustments to the deployment schedule. It makes for an easy analysis, but it not really realistic.

 

[Hyperion]

That second one seems to be a particularly bad waste of fuel. What's the point of sailing out with a vast fleet if much of it won't actually be concentrated?

I mean, given the Japanese objective of sinking American ships, those battleships were - as used, even - just there for the ride.

A battle of Midway where the battleships are used, as well as the carriers, might end particularly nastily for the Americans (I'm sure there are ways the US would respond, my point is, that would add problems to face).

Carriers unable to reply effectively to big guns do not do well at all.

Also, if they effectively bomb and blast Midway, how much are the Americans there going to be able to do to respond to the landing troops?

Bolded because to me, "effectively bombed and blasted" implies at least moderately significant damage - otherwise it wasn't very effective.

Thanks for the recommendation on Shattered Sword, guys.

The Japanese and Americans fought several major battles in which battleships where present but never got anywhere near each other. Even if more Japanese battleships had stayed with Nagumo's carriers, they'd have likely done nothing more in the battle than provided AA fire against attacking US bombers, and probably helped to evacuate survivors from any sinking carriers.

 

[Elfwine]

The Japanese and Americans fought several major battles in which battleships where present but never got anywhere near each other. Even if more Japanese battleships had stayed with Nagumo's carriers, they'd have likely done nothing more in the battle than provided AA fire against attacking US bombers, and probably helped to evacuate survivors from any sinking carriers.

Likely, sure, I'm just speculating on if they had done enough to justify burning the fuel.

Seems like a lost cause given Japanese leadership, though.

 

[Hyperion]

My understanding is, knowing he was 4 decks to 3, Nimitz considered it a fairly even fight. (He didn't seem to appreciate Midway actually gave him the edge: Fletcher could afford ship losses & recover his aircraft there, & Nagumo couldn't, plus Midway gave Nimitz a priceless advantage in recce Nagumo couldn't dream of.) With Yorktown absent, the question I have is, does Nimitz get Sara or Wasp? IIRC, Sara was still under refit; could she have been ready in time? If not, could Wasp be spared? (I'd say yes.) So we're back to OTL with only the names changed, essentially.

Saratoga missed the battle by a little over a day. From what I've seen both in various books and various online sources, Saratoga was actually repaired and ready for action, but at least part of the problem at the time in getting her to Midway was that Nimitz apparently didn't have enough cruisers and destroyers on hand to give her a suitable escort.

Wasp, from what I recall, was busy ferrying British Hurricanes to Malta around the time, so even if they cancel that mission, Wasp would have to return to Norfolk to prepare for a Pacific transfer, transfer to the Pacific, pick up her newer aircraft and Avenger squadron in San Diego, and then transit to Midway via Pearl Harbor.

You'd likely see her miss the battle by at least a day if not more.

 

[e of pi]

Saratoga missed the battle by a little over a day. From what I've seen both in various books and various online sources, Saratoga was actually repaired and ready for action, but at least part of the problem at the time in getting her to Midway was that Nimitz apparently didn't have enough cruisers and destroyers on hand to give her a suitable escort.

So with Yorktown sunk, Sara could pick up her escorts?

 

[phx1138]

Not sure that's necessarily all a plus, but it sounds good.

For Japan, it is, because it'll keep the U.S. out. Yamamoto was the one behind Op AI (Pearl Harbor). Without him...

Also, without him, no MI, either, & Japan concentrates on isolating Oz, instead (the SWP option).

It would explain bone-headed things like "land a few thousand troops with no support" for Midway. However secondary actually taking Midway was, the force committed to it should have been at least enough to do more than kill off a few good men (and maybe a few Marines if it gets lucky ).

It goes way, way deeper. Just the idea of seizing Midway is lunatic, even if IJN can do it (& nobody outside IJN in 1942 thinks they can): it was a trap for troops & it would put the SLOCs virtually on the doorstep of Pac Fleet subs. (Compare the Darwin option, equally bad.) Japan could not spare the shipping losses. Hell, Japan couldn't spare the delays supplying Midway would entail: she didn't have the bottoms to make up all the lost time, even at zero losses. Nor could she spare the extra fuel. (Of course, this is the same IJN which thought sending freight-carrying DDs to Guadalcanal, nightly, made logistic sense...)

Yeah. Best case scenario for Japan would probably be something like this:

Roughly even carrier losses (both sides lose 2), get rid of Spruance, and get out to try it again against sally #2.

But that requires Spruance to be clutching the idiot ball or a string of 20s for Japan if not both. Not technically ASB, but if things are going far south enough for the USN to really get the terms Japan wants, Spruance will exercise the better part of valor. So more believable - just - to have it be a bloodbath for both.

Agreed.

You do have an option to draw even Spruance onto Yamato's guns: silence John Murphy. Tambor spotted a couple of retreating cruisers (Mogami & a sister, can't recall which) & left Spruance thinking Yamamoto was still inbound, so Spruance pulled back to defend (per orders). Give Murphy a radio casualty, put him (or Mogami) in a slightly different place (Mogami gets orders a touch sooner?), even delay the re-radiation of his message to English (& English's staff work in the battle was pretty awful, with delays of up to 6h).

Yeah. I'm not sure why, but you don't develop that doctrine ("when enemy rolls over, stab in the belly') without some grostesque misunderstandings of how war works.

Not even specifically about modern war - that's the kind of delusion someone who hasn't fought serious opposition in way too long would have.

That's just it: Japan hasn't fought a truly determined enemy yet. In 1895, China was a circus, & in 1905, tsarist Russia not far short of one. Japan had no idea how constrained these wars had been. She genuinely had no concept of blue water war or a unified & determined enemy. Which is why I say even Britain, alone, could beat her.

Yeah. All three getting that would be really, really unlikely, even separately, but not technically impossible.

I take a view it's happened somewhere in the multiverse. (Just find a reasonable excuse.)

And fortunately for the USN, King was not a naval MacArthur.

That might be the level of dimwittery necessary for Japan to actually have a meaningful looking chance of a different war. Not a win - the odds are too long - but the ACW as the bloodiest war in US history won't hold that title in this WWII.

He assuredly was not. (He did have his issues...) We are exceedingly fortunate IMO Halsey never became CinCPac. After his performance at Leyte Gulf (evidently despite having seen a captured copy of the plan)...

Lack of resources, or some other problem? (on shipbuilding)

No, they just didn't have any more flat land to put the ways on. (Very mountainous islands.) Britain didn't suffer that, which is one reason her shipbuilding capacity was so much greater. Japan did innovate in wooden ships, which as I understand it could be built in less-favorable areas, but even then... And Japanese leadership couldn't see this was liable to be a problem.

Japan seems to have tried to cram a couple centuries worth of expansion into a couple decades.

Tried, & did in a lot of ways. The thing was, it takes more than just being able to build the weaps: sometimes, it also takes being able to engineer their replacements, you can't speed that up. AFAIK. Hiring foreign engineers, maybe? Even then, you need the skills in industry, & the tooling, & the ability to make the tooling, &.... That's "engineering depth".

How come? Not arguing, but you've studied this more than I have.

The aim was the same as MO. If done in about Feb '42, it would easily have swept away the Oz militia/inf force (IIRC, about a company). You get all the benefit of MO without the CV losses, plus a threat to Oz, plus a jump on putting a base at Tulagi to protect Japanese SLOCs. You do risk provoking Watchtower...or making it into a variation on MO...which could actually be worse for USN. Plus you might butterfly Doolittle, which also saves 250K Chinese slaughtered in retaliation.

Europe simply was the more important battlefront ...The USA could not affort to anger its own allies

Oh, you can forget "angry". FDR understood Hitler was the greater threat to the world, IMO.

The Sollomon sideshow had to wait...possibly at a smaller scale, with fewer forces involved, but still continued.

I find myself thinking there was the chance to reassign MacArthur to garrison duty at Alcatraz (unless he's had unscheduled neck surgery), cancel SWP ops, & let Nimitz attack Tarawa.

A question nobody seems to have considered yet: if Yorktown is sunk at Coral Sea along with Lexington, might that keep Shokaku from her OTL date with the repair yards and keep Zuikaku's air group from being butchered? If so, that gives the Japanese another two fleet carriers to play with.

An excellent point. (And I'm ashamed I overlooked it.) This gives Nimitz enormous headaches around Midway. IMO, he still can't refuse battle, but now, he must have Sara or Wasp. The butterflies are getting bigger...& if Murphy's silenced...

Torch could be scaled back with only landings in Morocco, where the land units had to advance overland longer distances towards Tunisia. Or after Torch, you might slow the pace of operations and provide less naval support in the Med.

All true. One option I like, tho it requires more audacity (or acceptance of hazard) than Marshall showed is, land at Bône.

Or one might send more USAAF units to the Pacific.

This could have pretty huge butterflies on the Battle of the Atlantic: even a few B-24s in Newfoundland or Iceland... Divert even more to the Pacific...

Or more land units.

And in all, at this time, there were already more U.S. forces (by manpower) in the Pacific than the Atlantic/ETO.

By far the least likely scenario is that after losing 2-3 additional USA carriers and Japan having 2-4 more carriers (net change of 4-7 carriers), that the USA makes no adjustments to the deployment schedule. It makes for an easy analysis, but it not really realistic.

Quite right. IDK if the yards could accelerate construction on the earliest Essexes, but there should be a couple near enough commissioning to shave off a couple of months.

If there aren't...I return to my mania for more subwar.

The Japanese and Americans fought several major battles in which battleships where present but never got anywhere near each other. Even if more Japanese battleships had stayed with Nagumo's carriers, they'd have likely done nothing more in the battle than provided AA fire against attacking US bombers, and probably helped to evacuate survivors from any sinking carriers.

Two things: IJN BBs couldn't keep up with Nagumo's carriers. And the fact they sortied at all buggered Nagumo: he was denied the cruisers' float scouts, because the cruisers were escorting the heavies. (IJN pre-attack recce was defective to an astounding degree.) So Yamamoto's stupid dispositions meant Nagumo didn't find Fletcher in time to destroy Fletcher's CVs before they launched, & the rest is history. (Not helped by lunatic orders to reduce Midway and search & destroy USN... with "reduce Midway" getting higher priority. Not like it was going anywhere...)

Likely, sure, I'm just speculating on if they had done enough to justify burning the fuel.

No.

Seems like a lost cause given Japanese leadership, though.

Now your getting it...

And why do I suck so bad at abbreviations?

I'll let that one go.

 

[Elfwine]

For Japan, it is, because it'll keep the U.S. out. Yamamoto was the one behind Op AI (Pearl Harbor). Without him...

True.

It goes way, way deeper. Just the idea of seizing Midway is lunatic, even if IJN can do it (& nobody outside IJN in 1942 thinks they can): it was a trap for troops & it would put the SLOCs virtually on the doorstep of Pac Fleet subs. (Compare the Darwin option, equally bad.) Japan could not spare the shipping losses. Hell, Japan couldn't spare the delays supplying Midway would entail: she didn't have the bottoms to make up all the lost time, even at zero losses. Nor could she spare the extra fuel. (Of course, this is the same IJN which thought sending freight-carrying DDs to Guadalcanal, nightly, made logistic sense...)

The saying "professionals study logistics" should have been stamped on the foreheads of every Japanese officer above the rank of corporal.

 

[Alternate History Geek]

Iin 1905, tsarist Russia not far short of one.

Actually, the Yellow Sea and Port Arthur were really hard fights for the Japanese. Port Arthur in particular had far, far more Japanese dead than Russian dead. The Russo-Japanese War was actually quite far from a curbstomp, and could easily have gone the other way.

An excellent point. (And I'm ashamed I overlooked it.) This gives Nimitz enormous headaches around Midway. IMO, he still can't refuse battle, but now, he must have Sara or Wasp. The butterflies are getting bigger...& if Murphy's silenced...

And if a Japanese submarine sinks the replacement CV... that gives the IJN a 3:1 advantage

FILLERFILLERFILLER

 

[Elfwine]

It was easy enough in Japan's POV to be upset Russia got off lightly, so I think for discussion's sake it wasn't much of a lesson.