Japanese Barbarossa

I don't recall any kind of city fortress under siege from the sea by a fleet like the Japanese had. Italy didn't block Malta with ships, they bombed it with land based planes. Leningrad wasn't even threathened from the sea. Nor was Sevastopol. Vladivostok would be very different, the Japanese had ultimate sea supremacy and many carrier based planes.

So here's my question: why did nobody try?

Nobody even tried putting a gun navy against a naval fortress. Even once. How about the British Home Fleet, surely they could strike where they wanted with impunity? All those German and occupied ports?

Never tried.

Yes, you're right. They'd bring the carriers. It will be a battle of aviation, and the Japanese will run out of high-octane fuel very fast. Now THAT has implications indeed.
 

b12ox

Banned
possibly because a fortress will have easy superiorty in firepower over naval assault guns
 
So here's my question: why did nobody try?

Nobody even tried putting a gun navy against a naval fortress. Even once. How about the British Home Fleet, surely they could strike where they wanted with impunity? All those German and occupied ports?

Never tried.

Yes, you're right. They'd bring the carriers. It will be a battle of aviation, and the Japanese will run out of high-octane fuel very fast. Now THAT has implications indeed.

Well i think there is really no point in shelling a coastal fortress from the sea. I mean, not anymore.

In the American civil war the last time it happened i think with the capture of New Orleans. After that i don't really know why it didn't happen again.

Perhaps its simply because you need a good prepared amphibious landing joined with the shelling to take the fort, as they would never surrender from just being shelled. That used to be different as forts where basically on their own when being sieged, the surrender completely up too the occupants. In WWI and later radios and air support took that away and a fort could be held indefinitly against shelling, no white flag.

correct me if i'm wrong on anything.
 

sharlin

Banned
And fairly recent experience in WW1 in the Dardnells battles showed that naval guns would do very little to forts. To take out the guns you need to hit the thing and thats generally a small target.
 

CalBear

Moderator
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Monthly Donor
You don't have to wreck Vladivostok, completely, just make the harbour unusable. As for the Pacific Squadron, that's only a problem for a country without a Navy, the Whole Soviet Navy didn't have the big-ship firepower the Japanese brought to Leyte Gulf.

Of course it's going to be different on the land, I imagine it's going to be Khalkhin Gol writ large, but that is going to be of limited use without having access to a port outside the Sea of Japan. Not that it's going to do any of the Axis much good either, Russia will advance slower, but will fight no less fiercely and Japan will run out of resources quicker. Net result? Probably a smaller East Germany and a less 'Sovietised' Warsaw pact, but China goes communist in 1948 or earlier.


If we are now talking about actually assaulting the port from the sea, using the surface fleet, it would NEVER happen. The IJN, as an article of faith, believed that ships vs. forts would always result in the forts winning. The deciding factor for Yamamoto's withdrawal at Midway was the "Navy history teaches us not to fight against land forces with naval vessels". (Shattered Sword p. 344). It was one thing to shell an unprotected beach, very much another to fight fortifications

The Japanese navy was wed to the concept of "The Decisive Battle". That required that the fleet's main power, its battleships, be preserved for the decisive battle. It is an indication of how desperate that Japanese became at Guadalcanal that they risked (and LOST) two BB in the effort to close Henderson Field. The Decisive Battle doctrine was why the Yamato and Musashi were never exposed to combat until the Japanese had lost the war (and even then they hoped to bring about a decisive action).

Vladivostok was never going to happen.
 
So? The Pacific Squadron would probably be supporting the land batteries from harbour and making little submarine excursions at the Japanese. They'd also mine the crap out of the area. There's also about the same amount of aeroplanes available to the Far Eastern Naval district as there was for Malta's defense at its height.
Mines are a two way thing, lay enough of them and a harbour becomes almost worthless. As for the rest of it, night attacks would nullify a lot of the defensive superiority of the forts, since it's harder to turn off all the lights in a city than all the lights on a warship.

I am still waiting for an explanation on how Malta was wasn't rendered unusable by the RM. It didn't have a lot of ships on station. It had way less guns than Vladivostok. It was defended by all of 3 biplanes at the start of the war. It had to be supplied by sea! You could argue Italian incompetence but the involvement of the Germans didn't really change matters in the long run.
A biting inferiority complex, the Italians way overestimated the local defences, and suspected their own forces were a pile of scrap metal in comparison.

If we are now talking about actually assaulting the port from the sea, using the surface fleet, it would NEVER happen. The IJN, as an article of faith, believed that ships vs. forts would always result in the forts winning. The deciding factor for Yamamoto's withdrawal at Midway was the "Navy history teaches us not to fight against land forces with naval vessels". (Shattered Sword p. 344). It was one thing to shell an unprotected beach, very much another to fight fortifications
Except that I'm in no way talking about the Japanese duking it out with the Vladivostok forts, just plastering the harbour into near uselessness.
 
A biting inferiority complex, the Italians way overestimated the local defences, and suspected their own forces were a pile of scrap metal in comparison.

Yes, and then the Germans got involved and threw something like 1500 planes trying to dive-bomb the harbour. And guess what? Nothing. Didn't even manage to get the drydocks completely taken out of commission, and they are very easy to target. Lost about 500 planes for their trouble.

Vladivostok had more planes, bigger guns, and more submarines than Malta ever had. Add in the entire Far Eastern Naval command and you can see why I am skeptical about the whole matter.

Except that I'm in no way talking about the Japanese duking it out with the Vladivostok forts, just plastering the harbour into near uselessness.

They'd have to get in comfortable range of Vladivostok's 12-inch guns, not to mention submarines and aeroplanes, to do that, not to mention Vladivostok's rail-based artillery that covered the entire bay from concrete firing points. Plastering could easily become a two-way process.
 

CalBear

Moderator
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Mines are a two way thing, lay enough of them and a harbour becomes almost worthless. As for the rest of it, night attacks would nullify a lot of the defensive superiority of the forts, since it's harder to turn off all the lights in a city than all the lights on a warship.

A biting inferiority complex, the Italians way overestimated the local defences, and suspected their own forces were a pile of scrap metal in comparison.

Except that I'm in no way talking about the Japanese duking it out with the Vladivostok forts, just plastering the harbour into near uselessness.

You can't have one without the other. You can't blow the pougies out of the harbor with naval shelling and not have to engage the forts. You simply can't. The Soviets had guns ranging in size all the way up to 14" defending the port, including a number of 180mm rifles (interestingly, these are the same size guns as the U.S. had on Midway, although the U.S nomenclature was 7"), so it isn't like the IJN can sit eight miles out to sea and fire away. If they are in range, the shore guns are in range.

If the Japanese try to do it from the air, they will be in place for weeks, if not months. The Soviets do have a number of submarines as part of their Pacific force, weak in surface units as it was. There were around 35 operational Shchuka class boats along with a number of "S" class & Leninets class boats that brought the operational total to around fifty hulls.

The Japanese, as was amply demonstrated, sucked at ASW. Japanese carriers, again, as amply demonstrated, were death traps when they suffered serious bomb or torpedo damage. Soviet submarines were, by far, the most effective branch of the Navy (for understandable reasons). Soviet torpedoes and mines worked very well, something that KM and Reich merchants found to their dismay.
 
Okay, fair enough, I'll concede. I still say that after December 7 that they could seal of the Sea of Japan, and thus render Vladivostok effectively worthless as a port though.
 
Which leaves Japan starting all the wars it did against the US, the European powers and the British Commonwealth OTL but now also with the USSR. Same Japanese resources, much greater usage and losses...
 
And then have the Russian troops in Siberia and along the Manchurian border go http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dERZjJ9anbc and tear through the IJA which was not prepared to fight them in any way shape or form.
Dangong is the closest decent port outside the Sea of Japan, so even rerunning Khalkhin Gol, it's not going to be easy for the Soviets.

Which leaves Japan starting all the wars it did against the US, the European powers and the British Commonwealth OTL but now also with the USSR. Same Japanese resources, much greater usage and losses...
Well no-one ever said the Japanese high-command was sane...
 
Dangong is the closest decent port outside the Sea of Japan, so even rerunning Khalkhin Gol, it's not going to be easy for the Soviets.

I agree on that. It will not actually be very easy, that's why I estimated two years somewhere on page 1 of this discussion. They will be seriously missing enough trucks to make things go quickly on the offensive.
 

b12ox

Banned
Dangong is the closest decent port outside the Sea of Japan, so even rerunning Khalkhin Gol, it's not going to be easy for the Soviets.

Well no-one ever said the Japanese high-command was sane...
They were sane enough as it turned out. How many chips they get for Vladivostock even if they drawn it in japanese blood.
 
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