Japanese sink US carriers at Pearl Harbor, what next?

  • Thread starter Deleted member 1487
  • Start date
No the slipways were more or less full, you'll have to cancel battleships or Alaska-class.... ships if you want more Essex-class carriers. Maybe you can squeeze in one or two more

Yeah, I suspected that was the case. You'd have to delay the three Alaskas about to be laid down and give their slipways over to Essexes. Otherwise...

Obviously, we'd all sign up for that, and Calbear would probably hold the entire shipyard hostage until it happened. But I don't know how well protected the Alaskas were politically at that point.
 
The first Independence class CVL was ordered in January 1942 with the next two in February, three in March, and three in June. If two CVs are sunk/seriously damaged at PH, the US definitely accelerates and expands that program. You may also see proposals such as turning the liner Normandie into a carrier move forward. You may also see Ranger get a serious overhaul to make her more operationally suitable (King proposed that but it was later in the war and no longer necessary). I wonder if the US would try to get its hands on the Bearn. I'm not sure how but they might have tried something (yes I am aware of that ship's limitations).

My guess is that upwards of 12 Baltimore hulls would be ordered converted to CVLs by January. Losing two fleet carriers would put a scare into the Navy Department.

Of course, none would be ready for operations until the first quarter of 1943, so it doesn't help Nimitz in the short term. But in '43, he'd get a a nice harvest of a dozen light carrier hulls by spring, assuming the air groups were ready for them.

As for the Alaskas, I'm not sure all three would get shunted back, but at least one of them (CB-2?) probably would be set aside in favor another Essex, which would then be available to Nimitz by 3Q of 1943. Maybe he even gets the rebuilt Lexington and Enterprise back by then, too, if they hadn't capsized.
 
Something else should be considered, possible battle losses. From what I've read no one expects Midway to happen when it did. But the attack on Port Moresby would that could mean a battle if the US Navy decides to fight. Battle losses occurred in that battle and if the US Navy goes on the attack. Carriers could be lost as well in other action depending on how the war goes. I would figure on one of the carriers built at Pearl Harbor being out of action permanently, but that is just me. Take your pick as to which one.
 
021351.jpg
What are those two towers for? Are they steel posts designed to keep the bow from falling off?:angel:
 
Something else should be considered, possible battle losses. From what I've read no one expects Midway to happen when it did. But the attack on Port Moresby would that could mean a battle if the US Navy decides to fight. Battle losses occurred in that battle and if the US Navy goes on the attack. Carriers could be lost as well in other action depending on how the war goes. I would figure on one of the carriers built at Pearl Harbor being out of action permanently, but that is just me. Take your pick as to which one.
IMO Port Moresby has to be booted in favor of covering Hawaii, preparing for Midway, and doing Doolittle ITTL. Its tragic for the two Australian militia brigades left there. Unless they're evacuated, which the Curtin Government and Dougie are unlikely to allow.
 
IMO Port Moresby has to be booted in favor of covering Hawaii, preparing for Midway, and doing Doolittle ITTL. Its tragic for the two Australian militia brigades left there. Unless they're evacuated, which the Curtin Government and Dougie are unlikely to allow.

I would think that the loss of two carriers at Pearly Harbor is more likely to butterfly away the Doolittle Raid - too risky a use of scarce carrier assets.

Roosevelt might insist anyway, but it's a tougher hill to climb to justify it in this situation.
 
I would think that the loss of two carriers at Pearly Harbor is more likely to butterfly away the Doolittle Raid - too risky a use of scarce carrier assets.

Roosevelt might insist anyway, but it's a tougher hill to climb to justify it in this situation.
Roosevelt was all but pathological about the Doolittle Raid, and 20-20 hindsight tells us he was right. He had the political shock of Pearl Harbor to deal with, he had to show that Europe First had to be done, America was out for blood, the US House was up for grabs, the Japanese were running rampant, the Philippines were going down, and America had nothing to show for any of it. At this rate, ITTL, the Navy couldn't begin to guarantee major victories until 1943! Based on the political ramifications of Doolittle inside Japan and the morale effect at home, the Raid was cheap. Besides, using medium land-based bombers off a carrier took the Japanese as much by surprise as Pearl did for the Americans.
 

Archibald

Banned
turning the liner Normandie into a carrier move forward. You may also see Ranger get a serious overhaul to make her more operationally suitable (King proposed that but it was later in the war and no longer necessary). I wonder if the US would try to get its hands on the Bearn.

The Bearn was a piece of junk, but a Normandie carrier would be AWE-SO-ME. Better than OTL miserable end.
 
Halsey was like the USN's Patton; tough, ruthlessly aggressive, and with the ego and stubbornness to go with. He wasn't called "Bull" for nothing!

Though in his defense his decision to take the bulk of the 3rd Fleet northward to destroy Ozawa's carrier group could be justified in light of what was known at the time: the Southern Force was walking into a trap, the Center Force had just been hammered, and the Northern Force was still at large with (for all they knew) four fully-loaded out carriers and two BB-hybrids. Taking all the battleships with him is questionable, but the aim to crush the opponent's main striking power, his naval air arm, was fundamentally correct.

Sorry, but leaving San Bernadino Strait, the only other strait wide enough to fit a fleet besides Surigao, without so much as a Seaman E-1 floating in a rubber dingy with a good walkie-talkie was absolutely unforgivable. Not only would Spruance never have done it, but I'm hard pressed to think of an American admiral who would this side of Farragut.

Unfortunately, to the best of my knowledge, no three star or above has EVER faced arrest and court-martial in the history of the US military. Even men like Kimmel and Short have more than a few biographers falling all over themselves to excuse actions by those two men that had they been Soviet officers would have gotten them and their entire staffs shot out of hand within hours (if not minutes). It seems that whenever a very senior officer gets into hot water, he's allowed to quietly retire rather than face the music. Meanwhile, "shit rolls downhill".

The Staff Officer: "General, the enemy has launched a surprise attack and they've broken through our entire front! Our forces are retreating and in total disarray!"

The General: "Quick, find the second lieutenant responsible for this!"

The Staff Officer: "Sir? Nobody is going to believe a butterbar could have caused all this!"

The General (scowling): "Alright then; Find the FIRST lieutenant responsible for this!"

The Staff Officer: "....":mad:
 
The first of the Bogues the Altamaha (later HMS Battler) was laid down in 15 April, almost 8 months before Pearl, with another 11 being started in the intermediate period. I suspect if this happens the British will get an IOU for the 8 of those vessels that were due to them, as an emergency measure while the US tries to build up a good head of CVEs to lay them over until the Essexes start to show up.
 
The first of the Bogues the Altamaha (later HMS Battler) was laid down in 15 April, almost 8 months before Pearl, with another 11 being started in the intermediate period. I suspect if this happens the British will get an IOU for the 8 of those vessels that were due to them, as an emergency measure while the US tries to build up a good head of CVEs to lay them over until the Essexes start to show up.

Do you believe that the British ITTL will still refuse to release any of their three carriers operating off the African coast in early to mid-1942 to serve in Australian home waters?
 
Do you believe that the British ITTL will still refuse to release any of their three carriers off the African coast to serve in Australian home waters?
No, but it takes about 4 escort carriers to equal just the aircraft capacity of a fleet carrier, so those eight Bogue Class ships would just about make up for losing two carriers, in terms of aircraft capacity at least.
 
No the slipways were more or less full, you'll have to cancel battleships or Alaska-class.... ships if you want more Essex-class carriers. Maybe you can squeeze in one or two more


That would have been a great, though afterthought decission, as the battleships were already questionable and certainly did not bring their value of money, compared to the carriers, since their role was not much different than the ones for light cruisers and destroyers, mainly gunboats for shooting shore targets and providing additional AA protection for other units. Appart form the earlier ordered North Carolina's the South Dakota and Iowa classes, as well as the correctly cancelled Montana class were a waist of money, resources and men, that with afterthought could have been used for more effective uses. At the time the shipbuilding was planned the USN as any other navy, were still thinking in the big gun battleship captial ship idea, mostly due to lack of experience and lack of ideas, since most senior officers in these navies were traditionally trained in an era where aircraft played little or no role.
 
No, but it takes about 4 escort carriers to equal just the aircraft capacity of a fleet carrier, so those eight Bogue Class ships would just about make up for losing two carriers, in terms of aircraft capacity at least.

Not correct in this way the British carriers had much smaller airgroups normally. (Illustrious class had between 36 and 54 at best, with the inclusion of a deckpark.) A British CVE normally had around 16 to 24 aircraft, depending on its role as a support vessel for fleetoperations, or ASW carrier.
 
Here's my humble opinion: the loss of Enterprise and Lexington means it's likely the Japanese take Midway with nary a fight, since the US Navy may want to save its remaining carrier fleet in the Pacific as much as possible until the Essex-class carriers start to become available by late 1942. As such, the "island hopping" campaign doesn't start until early 1943, with the liberation of Midway as the first target.
 
Not correct in this way the British carriers had much smaller air groups normally. (Illustrious class had between 36 and 54 at best, with the inclusion of a deck park.) A British CVE normally had around 16 to 24 aircraft, depending on its role as a support vessel for fleet operations, or ASW carrier.

Do YOU believe British decision-making regarding deployment and usage of their three carriers in the Indian Ocean (after the KB's raid there is over) will change ITTL? Will King's request for at least one of them for Australia still be denied?

Here's my humble opinion: the loss of Enterprise and Lexington means it's likely the Japanese take Midway with nary a fight, since the US Navy may want to save its remaining carrier fleet in the Pacific as much as possible until the Essex-class carriers start to become available by late 1942. As such, the "island hopping" campaign doesn't start until early 1943, with the liberation of Midway as the first target.

Japan's attack against Midway was all about luring in the remaining American air fleet. Not seizing the island. Though the IJA certainly wanted it as a forward base to prevent future Tokyo raids. Assuming Lexington and Enterprise are gone, that's only one deck less for Midway than OTL. Plus with all those air crews likely saved from a never done Battle of the Coral Sea (THAT is a battle the USN won't have the luxury to fight), and that the torpedoing of the Saratoga is likely to be butterflied, you'll still see 3 USN flattops at Midway (Hornet, Yorktown, Saratoga). Four, if as I suspect the Wasp goes directly to the Pacific and never goes to the Med.

By the time of Japan's attack on Midway, for the level of force in terms of aircraft, troops, and especially the bombardment force (1), Japan was never going to take Midway. For its size, Midway was very heavily defended. Then there's the shoals that were at least as bad as the atolls in the Marshalls.

1) A Special Naval Landing Force of approx. 2000 men, a carrier fleet limited to ten days of action before fuel shortages would force them to turn back, and only a force of four heavy cruisers to serve as a bombardment force. For all the talk of the mighty 18.1" guns of the Yamato, in fact except for those four cruisers every other major warship in the fleet sent to Midway were topped off (mostly) with AP rounds. For Midway, you'd need HE and GP.
 
Here's my humble opinion: the loss of Enterprise and Lexington means it's likely the Japanese take Midway with nary a fight, since the US Navy may want to save its remaining carrier fleet in the Pacific as much as possible until the Essex-class carriers start to become available by late 1942. As such, the "island hopping" campaign doesn't start until early 1943, with the liberation of Midway as the first target.

Why would the Japanese take Midway anyway? It had no strategic role in the Japanese thinking of the period and was only used as a bait in the OTL, nothing more, or less. Besides that, the IJN logistics could not affort supplying even the minimal garrizon at Mid3way, just as it was hardly able to do so with other remote captured islands in the central Pacific.
 
Why would the Japanese take Midway anyway? It had no strategic role in the Japanese thinking of the period and was only used as a bait in the OTL, nothing more, or less. Besides that, the IJN logistics could not affort supplying even the minimal garrizon at Mid3way, just as it was hardly able to do so with other remote captured islands in the central Pacific.

Protip: Even if the Japanese face no naval opposition at Midway, they're still gonna have to face a gauntlet of Marines.
 
Do YOU believe British decision-making regarding deployment and usage of their three carriers in the Indian Ocean (after the KB's raid there is over) will change ITTL? Will King's request for at least one of them for Australia still be denied?



Japan's attack against Midway was all about luring in the remaining American air fleet. Not seizing the island. Though the IJA certainly wanted it as a forward base to prevent future Tokyo raids. Assuming Lexington and Enterprise are gone, that's only one deck less for Midway than OTL. Plus with all those air crews likely saved from a never done Battle of the Coral Sea (THAT is a battle the USN won't have the luxury to fight), and that the torpedoing of the Saratoga is likely to be butterflied, you'll still see 3 USN flattops at Midway (Hornet, Yorktown, Saratoga). Four, if as I suspect the Wasp goes directly to the Pacific and never goes to the Med.

By the time of Japan's attack on Midway, for the level of force in terms of aircraft, troops, and especially the bombardment force (1), Japan was never going to take Midway. For its size, Midway was very heavily defended. Then there's the shoals that were at least as bad as the atolls in the Marshalls.

1) A Special Naval Landing Force of approx. 2000 men, a carrier fleet limited to ten days of action before fuel shortages would force them to turn back, and only a force of four heavy cruisers to serve as a bombardment force. For all the talk of the mighty 18.1" guns of the Yamato, in fact except for those four cruisers every other major warship in the fleet sent to Midway were topped off (mostly) with AP rounds. For Midway, you'd need HE and GP.

The British were certainly not fond of Admiral King and he was always the advocate of an anti British policy in the US Military, making him more an enemy than the Japanese and germans in many times. Luckily the US Government was more pro British and forced King to follow orders.

Secondly, the British deployed a number of carriers in the indian Ocean in the OTL in 1942, but only as they were at the time available there, ordering them back to European fronts when needed, as Europe came first, it was a simple as that. With that knowledge the USA could still ask for a British carrier pressence in the Far east, but that would be refused as long as the far more important war in Europe and Mediterranean Sea was not demanding more attention.
 
Top