Japanese sink US carriers at Pearl Harbor, what next?

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. 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..
With an added two Japanese decks (Shokaku+Zuikaku) you conviently forgot about. Also the Saratoga was a torpedo magnet so she might very well be in the yards for some reason.
 
The British were certainly not fond of Admiral King and he was always the advocate of an anti British policy (1) 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 presence 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. (2)

1) True, but according to Costello's Pacific War King himself made the request, despite how galling it was for him. That he was refused was a humiliation that turned his anglophobia up to an 11. Since the Wasp was at that very time serving to resupply Malta, the Admiralty's refusal was taken to be quite churlish.

2) Madagascar is neither in the Med nor Europe.
 
With an added two Japanese decks (Shokaku+Zuikaku) you conviently forgot about. Also the Saratoga was a torpedo magnet so she might very well be in the yards for some reason.

I "conveniently" forgot nothing. The Japanese did not feel that they needed those two decks for Midway, as they employed them for Port Moresby. With both the Lex and the E lost on 12/7, that feeling can only be reinforced.
 

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I "conveniently" forgot nothing. The Japanese did not feel that they needed those two decks for Midway, as they employed them for Port Moresby. With both the Lex and the E lost on 12/7, that feeling can only be reinforced.
They were slated for the original Midway operation, damage from Coral Sea was why they weren't there.
 
1) True, but according to Costello's Pacific War King himself made the request, despite how galling it was for him. That he was refused was a humiliation that turned his anglophobia up to an 11. Since the Wasp was at that very time serving to resupply Malta, the Admiralty's refusal was taken to be quite churlish.

2) Madagascar is neither in the Med nor Europe.

Madagaskar was still far away from the Pacific as well, actually closer to the Mediterranean, meaning the ships stationed there were likely to make an easy transfer to the Mediterranean Sea if needed, which happened in the OTL after the first few months of 1042, as the Operation Torch was being prepared, demanding every available carrier of the Royal Navy to be assigned to this operational theater, excluding teh ones under repair, or assigned to watch the Arctic Convoys.
 
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.

Yes, Parshall and Tully have a good appendix on the amphibious assault. The Japanese faced much steeper odds than they knew in trying to take Midway. As Calbear has put it, it would have been like Tarawa - only without the close air support and gun support (and troop strength!) that Smith had at his disposal at Tarawa.

Of course, this assumes that Nimitz attempts to defend Midway. Which I think he probably would.
 
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I really don't think there is much of anything that can be done to get more carriers at sea before 1943.

If smart, the USN would stop the Alaska and her sisters and start three carriers in their place. There was a plan for conversion of an Alaska to an aircraft carrier in January 1942. Not a great carrier but certainly better than the a CB. OTOH, they are not far enough along that you couldn't just stop and start an Essex.

It might have been interesting to lay down a couple Saipan class in early 1942, but the plans weren't developed until 1943 (although there was a June 1942 plan for a similar conversion of a heavy cruiser). If you really want to boost the fleet in 1943, put 3-5 Saipan's on the ways in early 1942 (replacing the Alaska's plus CA-70 and CA-71). However, I doubt the Navy gives up CA-70 and 71 if they are dropping the CB program.

Aside from the Alaska class, there really aren't many building slips that aren't currently in good use.

Also, not much room to even start additional ships of the Independence class immediately. I suppose one could start a few more CVL, but I am not sure how much impact it would have. In actuality, they don't get to sea that much faster than a larger carrier and it looks to me like the other CLs under construction might be too far along to convert.

No doubt Yorktown and Wasp head West virtually immediately; Hornet as well when she completes work-up. So, ITTL there are adequate CV decks available for the Pacific Fleet to mount the same responses at Coral Sea and Midway as per OTL; just different ships.

Furthermore, per Kimmel's policy if the carriers are at PH on 7 December, there are four BBs at sea. My guesstimation is that would be BatDiv 2 plus either Nevada or Maryland. Does Nagumo stay around to hunt them? Probably not.
 
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.

I think you're right: That's likely.

Of course, you can't use the Bogues for offensive operations or raids - they're too slow. (Only 18 knots.)

But in a temporary defensive role, they could be useful. Ideally, of course, they're really best suited to CAS and ASW work (or simple aircraft transport). But for a Navy Dept in full panic over the damage to its fast carrier striking forces, it's the sort of easy fix they could latch on to. Also: the paucity of fast carrier decks will put an even greater premium on building up land-based air support on key islands, and Bogues would be helpful in getting those aircraft to those stations.
 
I really don't think there is much of anything that can be done to get more carriers at sea before 1943.

If smart, the USN would stop the Alaska and her sisters and start three carriers in their place. There was a plan for conversion of an Alaska to an aircraft carrier in January 1942. Not a great carrier but certainly better than the a CB. OTOH, they are not far enough along that you couldn't just stop and start an Essex.

It might have been interesting to lay down a couple Saipan class in early 1942, but the plans weren't developed until 1943 (although there was a June 1942 plan for a similar conversion of a heavy cruiser). If you really want to boost the fleet in 1943, put 3-5 Saipan's on the ways in early 1942 (replacing the Alaska's plus CA-70 and CA-71). However, I doubt the Navy gives up CA-70 and 71 if they are dropping the CB program.

Aside from the Alaska class, there really aren't many building slips that aren't currently in good use.

Also, not much room to even start additional ships of the Independence class immediately. I suppose one could start a few more CVL, but I am not sure how much impact it would have. In actuality, they don't get to sea that much faster than a larger carrier and it looks to me like the other CLs under construction might be too far along to convert.

No doubt Yorktown and Wasp head West virtually immediately; Hornet as well when she completes work-up. So, ITTL there are adequate CV decks available for the Pacific Fleet to mount the same responses at Coral Sea and Midway as per OTL; just different ships.

Furthermore, per Kimmel's policy if the carriers are at PH on 7 December, there are four BBs at sea. My guesstimation is that would be BatDiv 2 plus either Nevada or Maryland. Does Nagumo stay around to hunt them? Probably not.

Good points. Options are limited for the USN in the short term.

As I noted above, an Alaska-class conversion carrier would take too long anyway. Easier to give the slip over to build an Essex, assuming the materials and equipment could be had (NYSC was not one of the five contractors that built Essexes; the only carrier they had built was the Saratoga, 15 years previously). Alaska was laid down on Dec. 17, and Guam in February. I could see a good chance of one of those slips at least being given over to an Essex, perhaps. But again, that doesn't help Nimitz out until the second half of 1943.

But the Navy could shift all carriers (except perhaps Ranger) over to EastPac immediately, and as you say, that gets Nimitz what he had in OTL in 1942. His downside is that he has less depth to work with. Any carrier he loses can't be replaced in the short term.

I suspect the real impact would be felt in 1943, as CINCPAC ends up getting a bigger surge of decks by mid-1943 than it actually got in OTL, thanks to the post Pearl Harbor "carrier panic" - more CVLs, and faster; more CVE's; an extra Essex or two; and of course it would likely be getting back Enterprise and Lexington from their rebuilds. And if I'm right about that, it shows how the Japanese just can't win for losing: even with an even more successful Pearl Harbor, they actually could end up in even worse position (in terms of carrier air power correlation of forces) by the time the war was 18 months old.
 
Based on the Maximally Effective PH Attack thread, assuming that there is a maximally effective strike on PH that include the sinking of the majority of BB and all the Pacific Fleet's carriers, who in this scenario are in port, what happens next? Clearly in the long run the US fleet building program would replace any losses and more, but in the meantime the Pacific Fleet is out of commission and the Japanese have no carrier opposition in the Pacific, what do they do? Clearly the carrier battles of 1942 aren't going to be happening.

Also could the US carriers be refloated and repaired or were they pretty much done for?
If all 3 aircraft carriers in the Pacific are destroyed or at least rendered hors de combat for the first half of 1942 then the Americans might adopt a more extreme Europe First strategy. Therefore Yorktown and Hornet would be loaned to the British for at least the first half of 1942. They would alternate between covering Arctic convoys, Malta convoys and club runs to Malta with the possibility of damaging or sinking Tirpitz if she still comes out to attack Convoy PQ12 and therefore butterflying away the PQ17 disaster.
 
I'm thinking a TL where the US sends Atlantic Fleet carriers to the Indian Ocean along with the RN carriers massing there. The combined Allied carrier fleet begins contesting the Japanese advance into the DEI. The IJN has send the KB to take care of the growing menace. A carrier battle erupts somewhere south of Java...
 
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.
Oh hey, I don't recall hearing of the British losing any carriers at PH.
 
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:

Part of that had to do with the reports coming back from the pilots. They made it seem as if the Center Force had been dealt a shattering blow, in reality it was only given a bloody nose and the supposed shambolic retreat was really just a feint. It still doesn't totally excuse the failure to leave some kind of blocking force but with his veteran fliers reporting they had the situation under control and a 'great battle' shaping up in the north it was easy for such a mistake to have been made. I find all this judgement of Halsey's decision making, while deserving in some respects, entirely too harsh given that our benefit of hindsight simply didn't exist on the bridge of the New Jersey in October '44. And speaking of blunders at Leyte Gulf, "Bull's Run" was nowhere near as egregious as say, Kurita turning tail in the face of the remnants of Taffy 3 at Samar...
 
I really don't think there is much of anything that can be done to get more carriers at sea before 1943.

Agreed. And even ITTL you won't see Ranger going to the Pacific. Its not that she was needed for Torch so much, that she was a terrific training ship for new pilots, or that the USN wanted to keep at least one CV of their own in the Atlantic. It was that King, correctly IMO, saw the Ranger as a one hit wonder that result in her immediate loss in a combat situation due to her inability to maintain a proper fleet speed with other US CVs (except for the Wasp) and that her handling problems meant so much of her potential air strength (up to 50%!) would be rendered useless.

If smart, the USN would stop the Alaska and her sisters and start three carriers in their place. There was a plan for conversion of an Alaska to an aircraft carrier in January 1942. Not a great carrier but certainly better than the a CB. OTOH, they are not far enough along that you couldn't just stop and start an Essex.

The Alaska-class was being built in answer to Germany's pocket battleships and due to reports of a Japanese battlecruiser class. IDK when the USN learned that those reports were spurious (I don't remember the name of that Japanese BC "class"), so when that was learned would have a lot to do with when the cancellation or conversion of the Alaska-class could be made. Considering the prejudice in the USN against battlecruisers it makes me wonder what the impetus was for those American battlecruisers was in the first place. I mean really..."Large Cruisers"? SOMEBODY from the very beginning was very unenthusiastic about those ships.

<snip>No doubt Yorktown and Wasp head West virtually immediately; Hornet as well when she completes work-up. So, ITTL there are adequate CV decks available for the Pacific Fleet to mount the same responses at Coral Sea and Midway as per OTL; just different ships.

Problem: The Wasp doesn't have the speed to keep up with the Yorktown-class.

Furthermore, per Kimmel's policy if the carriers are at PH on 7 December, there are four BBs at sea. My guesstimation is that would be BatDiv 2 plus either Nevada or Maryland. Does Nagumo stay around to hunt them? Probably not.

He didn't have the fuel to do so. As I've stated, if Nagumo had lost ships due to fuel exhaustion on the return trip, he's professionally disgraced despite the glory gained from PH.

I think you're right: That's likely.

Of course, you can't use the Bogues for offensive operations or raids - they're too slow. (Only 18 knots.)

But in a temporary defensive role, they could be useful. Ideally, of course, they're really best suited to CAS and ASW work (or simple aircraft transport). But for a Navy Dept in full panic over the damage to its fast carrier striking forces, it's the sort of easy fix they could latch on to. Also: the paucity of fast carrier decks will put an even greater premium on building up land-based air support on key islands, and Bogues would be helpful in getting those aircraft to those stations.

YES. THIS. It was this kind of mission that can lead to more rapid build ups for the remaining islands, including Johnston, Palmyra, Midway, Fiji, Samoa, Australia, Port Moresby, and especially New Caledonia. The Allies are NOT losing New Caledonia. Any Pacific War ATL in which they do is as Unspeakable Seamammal as losing Hawaii.

<snip>I suspect the real impact would be felt in 1943, as CINCPAC ends up getting a bigger surge of decks by mid-1943 than it actually got in OTL, thanks to the post Pearl Harbor "carrier panic" - more CVLs, and faster; more CVE's; an extra Essex or two; and of course it would likely be getting back Enterprise and Lexington from their rebuilds. And if I'm right about that, it shows how the Japanese just can't win for losing: even with an even more successful Pearl Harbor, they actually could end up in even worse position (in terms of carrier air power correlation of forces) by the time the war was 18 months old.

You could be right, BUT...how much would the crippling steel shortages of 1943 effect all this? It seems to me that all this mega-building up of the USN is going to put a serious dent into Lend Lease for armor. Not to mention America's own tank production. I have a vague memory of a statement that for every battleship the US produced meant one less armored division for Europe. I image that if true extra fleet CVs would add a bigger dent too. So will there be enough Grant tanks available for Monty for Second El Alemain to be fought in October of 1942? Probably. But I'd worry about that, and for the resources for Torch, Husky, and so on.

As to the Japanese, while they'd be in a worse position compared to carrier match ups, that assumes an OTL Midway. I remain convinced that ITTL Port Moresby at the very least will fall.

If all 3 aircraft carriers in the Pacific are destroyed or at least rendered hors de combat for the first half of 1942 then the Americans might adopt a more extreme Europe First strategy.

Well, you could easily argue that the Saratoga gets torpedoed and sunk in early 1942. But that's like supposing that the Nautilus sinks the Hiryu just as the other three CVs of the KB are being sunk in the Five Minutes of Midway.

As to adopting a more extreme Europe First strategy in WWII, that means the Republicans sweep the US House of Representatives. Losing the Senate was never in the cards. FDR was always a politician first, and he never went far beyond the limits of public opinion. Going full bore on Europe First really just means shutting down the Pacific War completely to put every last DD against the U-Boats while flooding even more L-L to our allies while there is little to be done to get US troops or strategic bombers up against Nazi Germany any time sooner. A very VERY ugly situation back home for the Democrats and FDR himself, with facing a non-OTL US House and a Republican Party that hasn't had any control of any levers of power in America since they lost the Supreme Court in 1937, the White House and Senate in 1932, and the US House in 1930. You could easily see Republicans in the House refusing to appropriate funds for FDR's stupendous military buildup until he can show at least a temporary "Japan First" war strategy.

Therefore Yorktown and Hornet would be loaned to the British for at least the first half of 1942. They would alternate between covering Arctic convoys, Malta convoys and club runs to Malta with the possibility of damaging or sinking Tirpitz if she still comes out to attack Convoy PQ12 and therefore butterflying away the PQ17 disaster.

Um, no. Wasp for Malta runs perhaps. Keeping Ranger in the North Sea is HIGHLY unlikely, as neither she nor other USN CVs were well equipped for extreme cold weather environments (unlike British CVs with their enclosed decks). One good reason why no USN CVs were sent to the Aleutians, and the Japanese found that their own carriers up there were relatively useless. But you're not sending regular fully capable Fleet CVs through Murmansk Convoy runs except over the dead bodies of Admirals King AND Stark (Stark would have understood the inadvisability of Fleet CVs going to Murmansk), SecNav Knox, SecWar Stimson, Nimitz, and FDR himself. After all, what happened to British carriers that tried to operate in fog and night enshrouded seas against a still operational Kriegsmarine in their own "home waters"?

The PQ-17 disaster was due to the incompetent decisions made by a man who was dying of an undiagnosed brain cancer. It wasn't a matter of a lack of Fleet CVs.

I'm thinking a TL where the US sends Atlantic Fleet carriers to the Indian Ocean along with the RN carriers massing there. The combined Allied carrier fleet begins contesting the Japanese advance into the DEI. The IJN has send the KB to take care of the growing menace. A carrier battle erupts somewhere south of Java...

:mad::confused::p:eek::rolleyes:XD:confounded::angry:
Incredibly unbelievably NO! Just no. NO-NO-NO-NO-NO-NO-NO! Did I mention NO? Never mind the operational limitations of such a distant redeployment, you'd face a congressional revolt, plus all the things I mentioned above politically about Murmansk Convoy deployment, only worst. Since now you're running up against FDR's anti-imperialism as well. At least in Murmansk you have the advantage of FDR's wanting to aid the USSR.

And the subsequent battle with the KB is giving Yamamoto the decisive battle that he wants.

Part of that had to do with the reports coming back from the pilots. They made it seem as if the Center Force had been dealt a shattering blow, in reality it was only given a bloody nose and the supposed shambolic retreat was really just a feint. It still doesn't totally excuse the failure to leave some kind of blocking force but with his veteran fliers reporting they had the situation under control and a 'great battle' shaping up in the north it was easy for such a mistake to have been made. I find all this judgement of Halsey's decision making, while deserving in some respects, entirely too harsh given that our benefit of hindsight simply didn't exist on the bridge of the New Jersey in October '44. And speaking of blunders at Leyte Gulf, "Bull's Run" was nowhere near as egregious as say, Kurita turning tail in the face of the remnants of Taffy 3 at Samar...

On the contrary. I have always believed that Halsey was hearing from his pilots what he wanted to hear, and was from that point at least thinking with his balls rather than his brain. Up until this time he had never commanded such a vast force in battle. He had gone from a force of a few fleet carriers to a land command in SWPAC until relieving Spruance post-Philippine Sea. He had a staff that had never been seriously expanded, and he and his people were simply overwhelmed. They were making mistakes.

Spruance was heavily criticized for refusing to "follow up" on both Midway and Philippine Sea, and by this time Halsey saw his one time protege rise up to be a rival rather than a junior partner. He was determined to "do Spruance one better" by charging in an all out commitment against "the real enemy", while ignoring the main Japanese battle line. Leaving said force to potentially bring itself to bear in the only way it possibly could, in a surface action.

Ozawa's run meant that he wasn't trying to engage, the pummeling he took, plus Halsey's own pilot reports indicated Ozawa was all but naked of aircraft, should have told him something. But his own aggressiveness had completely clouded his judgement. What the Japanese predicted he would do had he been at Midway was coming to the fore in this action. He was going to get the surface battleship action he had always dreamed of, and no one was going to dissuade him.

As to the egregious nature of Kurita's withdrawal, remember this:

He had had his command ship shot out from under him (and losing key members of his staff)

had suffered a brutal air assault the previous day losing him the Musashi among other vessels

he had stayed up all night waiting for a desperate battle trying to thread his way through a supposedly heavily defended San Bernadino Strait

had proceeded from there to expecting an assault by Halsey's battleships at any moment

to fighting what appeared to him (thanks to a lack of radar and the distortion of a morning haze) to be a force of fleet carriers and their escorts

to fighting a disorganized ship-to-ship fight caused by his ordering a general attack (because taking the hour it would have needed to put his fleet into battle line would have allowed the "fleet carriers" to start launching massive air strikes)

to intercepting desperate messages sent by Kincaid-sent in the clear (!)-to Halsey screaming for rescue (telling him that he was about to meet the full force of the enemy at any moment)

to learning of the annihilation of the Southern Force, and his not wanting the same to happen to his own force.

Based on his understanding at the time, had he continued with his assault the battle would have ended with at best only the remnants of Ozawa's fleet to continue to the war. So yes, his decision making IMO was quite understandable. And far better than Halsey's "Westmoreland-like" obliviousness.

As to being too harsh on Halsey? HE DESERVED EVERY LAST BIT OF IT, INCLUDING A FUCKING COURT-MARTIAL. Or at least NEVER getting his fifth star. He threw away any right to being given the benefit of the doubt when he blamed KINCAID of all people for "forcing" Halsey to return to Leyte because Kincaid "panicked" and couldn't find it in himself to deal with the threat by himself. A commander of an amphibious invasion force designed for shore bombardment, tactical air support, and ASW is supposed to be able to defeat a three-pronged assault (the Central Force, the Southern Force, and the Cruiser Force coming up behind it) consisting of almost every heavy hitter left in the IJN using just six old battleships mainly loaded with HE, CVE's, and escorts!? Yeah.

Public relations was as near and dear to Halsey's heart as it was for Dougout Dougie.:mad: As Herman Wouk wrote, when Halsey blamed Kincaid for his own command failures, he had reached his nadir. And he never changed his story to the end of his days. But the Navy brass knew. As did Congress, eventually. Not for nothing did Nimitz get a whole class of fleet carriers named after him, and Spruance did for a cruiser class. Halsey? One dinky little tin can of a destroyer.:evilsmile:
 
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I'm thinking a TL where the US sends Atlantic Fleet carriers to the Indian Ocean along with the RN carriers massing there. The combined Allied carrier fleet begins contesting the Japanese advance into the DEI. The IJN has send the KB to take care of the growing menace. A carrier battle erupts somewhere south of Java...
I like the concept it moves the time line into a different direction. Midway would be concept that Yamamoto is pushing but it does not have to be location specific. Yamamoto change the location as the strategic and tactical situation changes. Such as the threat to the Japanese Oil Supply.
 
But does with North Carolina or Washington, likely escorts. OTL Washington was grouped with Enterprise, Essex and Saratoga.

Not a problem.

Wasp also deployed as part of TF-61 to Guadalcanal with Enterprise and Sara and she was operating with Hornet when she ran afoul of I-19. Her top end speed was three knots slower than the Yorktowns. That's not a big deal.

Ranger also operated out of Scapa Flow with the RN in 1943 to include OPERATION LEADER so I am not sure where the notion that the US could not or would not do that comes from.
 
Agreed. And even ITTL you won't see Ranger going to the Pacific. Its not that she was needed for Torch so much, that she was a terrific training ship for new pilots, or that the USN wanted to keep at least one CV of their own in the Atlantic. It was that King, correctly IMO, saw the Ranger as a one hit wonder that result in her immediate loss in a combat situation due to her inability to maintain a proper fleet speed with other US CVs (except for the Wasp) and that her handling problems meant so much of her potential air strength (up to 50%!) would be rendered useless.

I agree: Ranger stays in the Atlantic, supports TORCH, and basically is used much as she was in OTL. Maybe an extra run or two to Malta if Wasp goes to CINCPAC. Which I think it would have to.
The Alaska-class was being built in answer to Germany's pocket battleships and due to reports of a Japanese battlecruiser class. IDK when the USN learned that those reports were spurious (I don't remember the name of that Japanese BC "class"), so when that was learned would have a lot to do with when the cancellation or conversion of the Alaska-class could be made. Considering the prejudice in the USN against battlecruisers it makes me wonder what the impetus was for those American battlecruisers was in the first place. I mean really..."Large Cruisers"? SOMEBODY from the very beginning was very unenthusiastic about those ships.

I keep reading scuttlebutt that Roosevelt played an outsized role in pushing the Alaskas.

If true, it will be hard to get rid of them completely. Well, not until mid-1943, when the last three ships were cancelled - by which point the "killer cruiser" threat seemed to have receded... But perhaps King could get enough leverage to grab one slipway (and think of the steel savings). It's the kind of thing I can see happening once the Navy Department lets the image sink in of Lex and Big E sitting as smoldering hulks on the muddy floor of Pearl Harbor.

YES. THIS. It was this kind of mission that can lead to more rapid build ups for the remaining islands, including Johnston, Palmyra, Midway, Fiji, Samoa, Australia, Port Moresby, and especially New Caledonia. The Allies are NOT losing New Caledonia. Any Pacific War ATL in which they do is as Unspeakable Seamammal as losing Hawaii.

Yeah, we looked at this last year on a Midway thread - here it is. New Caledonia really is a bridge too far. No way the IJN can take it.

You could be right, BUT...how much would the crippling steel shortages of 1943 effect all this? It seems to me that all this mega-building up of the USN is going to put a serious dent into Lend Lease for armor. Not to mention America's own tank production. I have a vague memory of a statement that for every battleship the US produced meant one less armored division for Europe. I image that if true extra fleet CVs would add a bigger dent too. So will there be enough Grant tanks available for Monty for Second El Alemain to be fought in October of 1942? Probably. But I'd worry about that, and for the resources for Torch, Husky, and so on.

I hadn't thought about the steel shortages. But I would imagine that with a bigger "carrier panic" in this TL, Lend Lease (and perhaps US Army tank production, for a spell) takes the hit, if there is one. And by Lend Lease, I mean the Soviets, since Churchill was able to do a lot more up-close lobbying. I feel high confidence that the Independence-class CVL's get goosed hard - ordered all at once, and probably more than the run of nine we had. Badly as the USN needs the light cruisers, the decks will be seen as life-or-death needs.

As to the Japanese, while they'd be in a worse position compared to carrier match ups, that assumes an OTL Midway. I remain convinced that ITTL Port Moresby at the very least will fall.

Port Moresby? Maybe. Hmmmm... I guess it depends on whether Nimitz wants to fight for it. He has the carriers to stop Operation MO if everything but Ranger gets moved west, but he also has no depth to work with, either.

In fact, the kinds of changes in production and deployments in regards to carriers we've been talking about probably would be seen in retrospect as overkill. But real life works that way. Something bad happens, and there is an overreaction after panic sets in.
 

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Wasp also deployed as part of TF-61 to Guadalcanal with Enterprise and Sara and she was operating with Hornet when she ran afoul of I-19. Her top end speed was three knots slower than the Yorktowns. That's not a big deal.

Ranger also operated out of Scapa Flow with the RN in 1943 to include OPERATION LEADER so I am not sure where the notion that the US could not or would not do that comes from.
It wasn't the speed that killed Wasp it was the lack of of armour (and the complete and utterl bullshit salvo of I-19, best torpedo salvo OF THE WAR!, but that's beside the points). No carrier AFAIK would have survived the salvo Wasp took,
 
Public relations was as near and dear to Halsey's heart as it was for Dougout Dougie.:mad: As Herman Wouk wrote, when Halsey blamed Kincaid for his own command failures, he had reached his nadir. And he never changed his story to the end of his days. But the Navy brass knew. As did Congress, eventually. Not for nothing did Nimitz get a whole class of fleet carriers named after him, and Spruance did for a cruiser class. Halsey? One dinky little tin can of a destroyer.:evilsmile:

Slight correction, but Spruance got a destroyer class, and not a cruiser class. (Still ashame we retired those...)
 
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