OTL the USAAF opposed the USN flying land based aircraft till mid 1942 ..
and thats only one example
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OTL the USAAF opposed the USN flying land based aircraft till mid 1942 ..
and thats only one example
That is getting butterflied out a bit in this timeline. The Navy B-24s and PB4-Y2 (ish) planes are in no way ship borne capable but as long as the bomb loads were reduced and the defensive armament reduced so that the AAF does not think the USN wheeled planes will survive attacking defended point targets, that fight would not be public but only seen in the halls of the budget office.
There was a vast difference between interservice rivalry in the USA, and the UK for that matter, and the relationship between the IJA and IJN. It would go so far as one service to withhold vital information from the other resulting in Japanese deaths and compromise or worse of the mission. In the US forces, while there might be quite vicious budget battles going on at higher levels, fights about missions etc, on lower levels there was generally a more collegial attitude. Not so with IJA/IJN. As the saying goes, as a "family" they put the "fun" is dysfunctional.
YAY!!!!!!!! thank you fester!!!!! someone finally put some of the turrets from Lexington and Saratoga to good use
Driftless
Donor
That would have been good use for those turrets and guns. 8" guns with some reach should drastically alter the plan-of-attach for the Japanese. ITTL, there are several improved high priority targets (improved runway, lagoon anchorage, 8" guns with armored turrets). The Japanese will need to divert heavier forces and greater numbers.
On the other side of the coin, the installation of the 8" guns would be a pretty hefty engineering piece of work on a low-rise location like Wake. The turret barbette/ammunition supply would need to be buried, probably below the water table level; so they'd need some means for keeping water from seeping into the powder and shell storage.
8 inch shells pretty much can wreck a destroyer if it is hit in the right place.
Your call ... but it would be much better if you had a plausible reason why.
iOTL the AAF only gave in because of the fiasco that was Drumbeat in Q1&2 1942.
Basically like all air forces they were fixated on the high level bomber.
They consider any of their crew capable of ASuW
and as for ASW ... that was unimportant and completely beneath them.
By June the AAF was very glad to get out of the ASW business completely
and the USN was happy to be seen to doing something ... anything .. to remedy its own complete lack of readiness as well.
TBH the one great implausibility of your storyline is how much that is being altered.
IMHO nothing we have seen ATL to date has justified any change in the attitudes of either service.
I think that's a serious understatement, four twin 8" mounts encased in concrete would need to be destroyed by a battleship or air strike prior to the invasion no way would destroyers or cruisers win such a fight.
Forts with massive range finders and with only a very small target area above the ground are massively stronger than the same guns on a large moving hull. Even a full 8" CA isn't going to win and forget about Yūbari or Tenryū class light cruisers.
If you build a mulberry type caisson with the turrets already fitted you can tow it into the lagoon sink it into a pre-prepared slot and then pump concrete in to fill the floatation chambers to thicken the armour. Same with the horizontal protection. One unit for each turret and a couple for fire control and power supply and then job done. the ammunition and supplys can then be directly off loaded directly from supply ships
The USN had long identified a long range patrol plane need for the Pacific. Their sea plane development route was going to extreme range in OTL (Look at Boeing Sea Ranger, Consolidated Corregidor, Martin Mars as 3,000+ mile range patrol bombers that the USN funded for development). Given a navalist president and a request for less than 200 air frames (120 front line, 80 for training and maintenance float) over several years as well as significantly more funding for naval expansion early on, I will hand wave a minor bureaucratic fight over your objections. It is not a decisive story point. Instead it is much like the TTL Atlanta class ships where a need is addressed in a slightly different manner than OTL mainly because it is an ATL.
Scratch their heads mightily and then believe that Bushido spirit will defeat firepower.
Or they can come up with Plan B.
8 turrets are available. Batteries Acton and Boxboro (from Lexington) are on Wake. Batteries Concord and Danvers (from Lexington) are heading to Midway. Batteries Rexford and Stillwater are designated for Palmyra. Samoa is penciled in to receive Battery Troy and Utica.
Land out of range and flank it then bring up mortars to destroy them? O wait its a small an island..... :-(
Realistically I don't think the IJN ever mounted an invasion of anything this hard in OTL, the only thing I can think of is fail the first time then plan to bring the entire CV force to suppress it?
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None of them are going even more west? Maybe just to me but that looks a bit defeatist and hindsight laden, would some of them not be thrown away on Guam or the Philippines? Say somewhere completely indefensible like Batan Island (not to be confused with Bataan Peninsula).
The only way one of these turrets could be put out of action is to be hit by an armor piercing bomb that hits right on it, which even with a well experienced dive bomber pilot will need a good deal of luck, or a direct hit by a 12" or larger AP shell. After all these things were designed to be able to take major hits from naval rifles. Unlike aboard ship where a near miss can cause flooding, fires, etc here a miss rearranges sand and coral. These arrangements don't make Wake impregnable, however they make the resources needed and the cost to be paid to take it much, much higher.
As far as Guam goes, it is a lost cause due to where it is compared to Japanese bases. Not that Guam couldn't be made extremely difficult to conquer but the odds of it beating off a Japanese attack are minimal so you are throwing away forces that are needed elsewhere. While Palmyra and Samoa we "know" from OTL were never attacked, the Japanese did look at hitting them, and if they were taken the route to Australia would be severely challenged. If things go more or less as OTL then once Samoa and Palmyra are in the clear you can keep a small crew to simply maintain the turrets/coastal guns.
As far as shore bombardment goes, with the except of something like trying to hit these turrets or other heavily protected installations, the ships need to fire HE shells not AP. Of course since the ships have limited magazine space, if you plan on shore bombardment you use space for HE, fewer AP. Against large armored vessels HE is much less useful than AP although against smaller vessels or merchants it does work just fine. For the IJN the thought of reducing the anti-ship ammunition load for shore support for battleships is anathema. If you don't practice shore bombardment and have a system for controlling fires to ensure you don't hit your own troops, to shift targets as needed, and even for using pre-invasion recon to locate fixed targets (like those turrets), your4 support will be much less effective and you may end up killing a lot of your own forces.
As far as Guam goes, it is a lost cause due to where it is compared to Japanese bases. Not that Guam couldn't be made extremely difficult to conquer but the odds of it beating off a Japanese attack are minimal so you are throwing away forces that are needed elsewhere. While Palmyra and Samoa we "know" from OTL were never attacked, the Japanese did look at hitting them, and if they were taken the route to Australia would be severely challenged. If things go more or less as OTL then once Samoa and Palmyra are in the clear you can keep a small crew to simply maintain the turrets/coastal guns.
As far as shore bombardment goes, with the except of something like trying to hit these turrets or other heavily protected installations, the ships need to fire HE shells not AP. Of course since the ships have limited magazine space, if you plan on shore bombardment you use space for HE, fewer AP. Against large armored vessels HE is much less useful than AP although against smaller vessels or merchants it does work just fine. For the IJN the thought of reducing the anti-ship ammunition load for shore support for battleships is anathema. If you don't practice shore bombardment and have a system for controlling fires to ensure you don't hit your own troops, to shift targets as needed, and even for using pre-invasion recon to locate fixed targets (like those turrets), your4 support will be much less effective and you may end up killing a lot of your own forces.
RamscoopRaider
Donor
Not these turrets, only .75" of armor, a 5" shell will penetrate well past 11,000 yards. Unless some extra armor is put on, even a DD can kill them if it gets close enough to shoot accurately
Coastal defense of the Philippines is an Army job. The Pacific Island possession defense is a Department of the Navy job with the Marines providing most of the manpower. These are Navy weapons being used for a Navy mission. If the Army asked for the guns, there might be an arrangement that could be made. But the Army never asked for the guns. As it is, the use of naval rifles to defend the landing beaches of Lingayan Gulf might be useful, but this timeline already has several railroad guns in the Philippines that can fill this role.
Guns to be placed on Batan Island need to start at a Springfield rife. At this point, the defense plan for Batan Island consists of the mayor calling the mainland and then surrendering quickly. Neither the Philippine Army nor the US Army garrison has the manpower or equipment to garrison all of Luzon. They think they have enough manpower and equipment to hold the Central Luzon Plains and Bataan as a fallback position while the Harbor Defense Command holds Manila Bay.
Regarding Guam, the assessment in this timeline and our timeline is similar. Without the massive commitment of an Army garrison plus several fighter wings plus consistent supply convoys covered by the entire US Pacific Fleet shuttling back and forth from Pearl Harbor to Agana, Guam is too easy to be isolated and besieged. The US already has a reinforced division tripwire force that can't be securely resupplied under pre-Pearl Harbor assumptions in Manila, they aren't going to add a second one.
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