Midway captured due to intel failure, NOW WHAT?

Say the Japanese capture Midway WITHOUT a major naval battle, just steam up, hammer the defences and take the place while the US Carrier fleet is off somewhere else. Intelligence didn't work out what was really going on.

Now they have to defend the blasted place,:eek: a long way from other Japanese bases but comparatively close to the US Pacific fleet base at Pearl Harbour.:cool:

This would be a version of Guadalcanal, but with the positions of the US and Japan reversed. A long grinding war of attrition with a beleagured garision starving at the end of a precarious supply line and the whole nasty business vacuuming up resources of all kinds Japan really can't afford to lose.:(

Or would it?

Your thoughts ladies and gentlemice?
 
American Submarines and heavily armed PT boats with torpedoes and 20mm & 40mm and quad 50.cal MGs in hunting patrol wolfpacks near and around occupied Midway will make their attack runs and start sinking just enough IJN cargo & supply ships to bleed the IJN Maritime merchant fleet in this region of the pacific and the garrison on Midway Is. to start call their Island Starvation Is. as the IJA troops start becoming just skin & bones as they try to subsist on some fish, the gooney birds & their Iron Rations now cut in half again.......

And also American B-17s will crater the occupied island, especially the airfields, so as to deny the IJA any chance of resupplying the island from the air....
 
I just finished reading "Shattered Sword," a very detailed history of Midway from the Japanese POV. I'm afraid "success" at Midway would have been just as bad if not worse than the failure they experienced. As said above, the airfield could be destroyed by heavies from Hawaii, and then the resupply effort is, at best, interdicted and, at worst, becomes the magnet that draws the IJN carrier force to their doom anyway.

One would have to start the POD much, much earlier and change the IJN's mentality of seeking a "decisive battle" to make Midway into any kind of success for the Japanese.
 
Shattered Sword actually makes a good case that even if the IJN had won the naval battle their assault force would have failed to take the island.

However, let's say they take it. It still won't be anything like Guadalcanal. Midway is TINY; around 3 sq miles of land area, including some islets. Guadalcanal is over 2,000 sq miles.

Midway is all alone in the ocean. Guadalcanal is in the Solomons, which have another 8,000 sq miles or so of land area. You can hide a lot of troops in 10,000 square miles, and lots of small craft can dart about the islands.

A counter-invasion of Midway would be over in a day or two; there's just no where to hide or fall back to.
 

Art

Monthly Donor
look at the fact that Wake, with not even 1 tenth the firepower that Midway had. . .

and not enough trained marines or construction men to man all their artillery, slaughtered the Japanese in the water, and wiped them OUT on Wilkes! From
Wiki:

The Marines were armed with six 5 in (130 mm)/51 cal shore batteries, removed from a scrapped battleship; twelve 3 in (76 mm)/50 cal anti-aircraft guns (with only a single working anti-aircraft director among them); eighteen .50 in (12.7 mm) Browning heavy machine guns; and thirty .30 in (7.62 mm) heavy, medium and light water- and air-cooled machine guns of various manufacture and operating condition.


The Japanese had 3 Light Cruisers and 6 Destroyers for the first attempt, the experimental Yubari, Tenryu, Tasuda, and 6 destroyers, with a total of 14 5.5 naval cannons and 18 4.7 inch naval cannon, against 6 5 inch cannons from the U. S. S. Texas and 4 F4F Wildcat fighters of V. M. A. 211. A Midway assault will make Iwo Jima look like a joke.
 
Indeed: the unit that made the first IJA counterattack on the 'Canal was the 28th Infantry Regiment under Col. Kyano Ichiki. His Regiment was tasked with Midway, and they and a Combined SNLF (Special Naval Landing Force) would've been slaughtered. The Japanese had no landing craft to get over the reef, and it's a 200-yard walk from the reef to either Sand I. or Eastern I. from the reef on the south side-where the Japanese planned to land. The Japanese had no fire-support doctrine for landings, and other than a preliminary bombardment, that was it. Once the landing force has been exterminated, that's it. The Imperial Navy can bombard the atoll until their fuel runs low, then it's back to Japan (or Truk).

Now, if the Japanese did take Midway, there's several things that will happen. First, carrier air strikes. Saratoga arrives on 11 June, so PACFLT will have four operational carriers under this scenario, and Wasp arrives in July. Second, B-17s and B-24s can strike Midway from Hawaiian airfields with bomb-bay fuel tanks, but still packing 4 500-lb bombs. Third, Submarine interdiction of a very tenuous supply line begins, and even with the wretched performance of USN torpedoes, all it takes is a few sinkings, and the Japanese are on thin ice. Fourth, the first U.S. offensive in the Pacific takes place at Midway instead of in the Solomons.
 
The premise is an ASB one as it requires too many changes to even have the slightest chance of success.


Total collapse of US code breaking successes, the entire US Pacific Fleet in a completely different deployment and the IJN completely violating their own fundamental doctrine insisting on seeking the grand all out battle, a doctrine held so dear that top IJN officers tended to become psychotic when the USN did not appear ready to grant such a battle...these are just three major changes that would be required.
 
The dog catches the car

The premise is an ASB one as it requires too many changes to even have the slightest chance of success.


Total collapse of US code breaking successes, the entire US Pacific Fleet in a completely different deployment and the IJN completely violating their own fundamental doctrine insisting on seeking the grand all out battle, a doctrine held so dear that top IJN officers tended to become psychotic when the USN did not appear ready to grant such a battle...these are just three major changes that would be required.

Thanks.

The premise was more a question of seeing the Japanese landing force in the position of a dog chasing a car.:confused:

What is he going to do if he CATCHES it?:rolleyes:

Now an ASB would be asking what if the US decided to LET the Japanese take Midway so the USN could do the nasty stuff the other people who responded to this suggested. Bombing the runway, submarines and PT boats sink the supply ships, just decide to create something that focuses Japanese effort somewhere the US can bleed them out slowly and as painfully as possible.

That would never get approved if I am reading the American politicians and commanders right. Or the Japanese from your reading of them.

I just keep seeing the dog bite the tire, sink his teeth in and what happens next...
 
Thanks.

The premise was more a question of seeing the Japanese landing force in the position of a dog chasing a car.:confused:

What is he going to do if he CATCHES it?:rolleyes:

Now an ASB would be asking what if the US decided to LET the Japanese take Midway so the USN could do the nasty stuff the other people who responded to this suggested. Bombing the runway, submarines and PT boats sink the supply ships, just decide to create something that focuses Japanese effort somewhere the US can bleed them out slowly and as painfully as possible.

That would never get approved if I am reading the American politicians and commanders right. Or the Japanese from your reading of them.

I just keep seeing the dog bite the tire, sink his teeth in and what happens next...

Your point is logical.
As you say, the issue is mainly political. Maybe a Coral Sea which sinks or damages more US assets so opposing Midway is seen as suicidal? Leading to the acceptance of an elephant trap stategy.
 
Top