I wonder if the Army would have cooperated, or would have again blackballed the Oahu invasion. They had gamed it out & saw it as not worth the number of transports required to bring the necessary number of soldiers and supplies. June - July was when the original war plan had the Army and Navy returning cargo ships to carrying seriously needed raw materials to Japans factories. Both were under pressure to do this. Inexplicablly the enemy was not suing for peace and asking for terms as the Japanese war plan predicted. As it was the Japanese had sever difficulties supporting a fight vs a single US ground division and a modest air wing on Guadalcanal. Would the Army have been willing to attempt a even worse logistics challenge vs Hawaiian islands?
Midway is a JAPANESE trap
- Thread starter mack8
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I wonder if the Army would have cooperated, or would have again blackballed the Oahu invasion. They had gamed it out & saw it as not worth the number of transports required to bring the necessary number of soldiers and supplies. June - July was when the original war plan had the Army and Navy returning cargo ships to carrying seriously needed raw materials to Japans factories. Both were under pressure to do this. Inexplicablly the enemy was not suing for peace and asking for terms as the Japanese war plan predicted. As it was the Japanese had sever difficulties supporting a fight vs a single US ground division and a modest air wing on Guadalcanal. Would the Army have been willing to attempt a even worse logistics challenge vs Hawaiian islands?
If the Japanese win at Midway, Guadalcanal almost certainly doesn't happen and the logistical challenges therein remain unexposed. The IJA, still flushed with 'victory disease' from Operation Centrifuge and perhaps even swayed by the IJN's Midway triumph, MIGHT be willing to give it a go. Whether they prevail at Hawaii is of course another matter entirely.
We all know now that Invasion Oahu would almost certainly fail. That being said, what was American strategic thinking at the time? Did the Joint Chiefs consider a Japanese invasion of Oahu to be a serious threat? Might a Japanese victory at Midway frighten them to the extent that they would double down on fortifying the Hawaiian islands or (less likely) pull the fleet out of Pearl and relocate it to the West Coast?
OTL Midway is what made Operation Watchtower possible. Admiral King wanted to seize the initiative before the IJN got its balance.
The IJN was split between Combined Fleet (Yamamoto) and GHQ as to who was actually in control. The IJN had a history of bait and switch plans with the Army, and the Army was aware and cautious of this chicanery.
Learning about Imperial Japanese domestic politics reminds me of why Japanese palaces had nightingale floors.
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It did not help that Osami Nagano of the Naval General Staff lacked Yamamoto's charisma and was often derided as a 'desk admiral'. Ironically he, like Yamamoto, was also a Harvard man and spent just as much time in the States. We can now see that Nagano had a better understanding of the Americans than Yamamoto did, as he was in favour of capturing the Indies without involving America, but his proposal was roundly ignored.
Why make that assumption and what do you mean by immediately. Part of the underlying logic of Midway is the USN has to be lured out to fight, because it is the inferior navy. And there is nothing in IJN intelligence that suggests otherwise. You have BDA of Pearl Harbour. You have AAR from Coral Sea, you have Janes you probably have belated intel from the East coast and Panama. The argument is that unless there is a vital US interest at stake the USN would not risk a battle with a superior fleet, and the IJN believes with confidence that the 4 carriers of KB vastly outnumber the carriers the USN has available.
For that to be valid you have to actually credible threaten Midway and even if you know they know you don't know Yorktown will be at sea ( the USN does not actually know either until very late in the day) and don't know how the USN handles its air groups so you don't know these will be full. The working assumption on the available intelligence is the US only has 2 carriers and possibly with reduced air groups.
A flotilla of old slow and expendable ships is not a credible threat. Its target practice for the Midway airgroup which can continually be reinforced from Pearl. Midway can scout 1000 nm from its base and Midway only needs to focus on a fairy narrow sector, the rest can largely be covered by aircraft from Pearl. A fleet moving at 15kts is in scouting range for 66 hours. In fact it was detected at just over 500 m. If its not detected its no threat, when it is while the USN might sortie they will also converge subs on the area and might sink the transports. If it does it ceases to be a threat.
Its really only when the USN has confirmation that Midway is under attack from carrier aircraft or that KB is present ( about 0530 on 4 June) that the threat is material at which point OTL see Shattered Sword. And a strike from a small carrier or even a couple is unlikely to be effective. In order to launch that attack you have to be well within scouting range of Midway.
The USN objective after all is to do damage to the IJN not specifically to the IJN carrier force. If the KB is far enough away to avoid detection, its also too far away to intervene and the US carriers may after sinking the decoy or invasion force decide jobs a good un and retire on Pearl, leaving you to explain why Ichiki and his Butai are being digested by sharks.
Assuming the USN will pre position itself at a location convenient for your carriers to ambush it and stay there means a completely different set of assumptions about the USN strength and the assumption that the USN will close on Midway prior to Midway actually being under threat.
In terms of the effect, probably very little. The US strategic debate is already about Rabaul or the Solomons in fact Rabaul is a non starter for a year or more as the troops are not available. The US has one division available 1st Marines in essence. The other ground forces are the Australians who are not about to participate in Macs fantasies and King is not about to give up his Marines even if Mac begs nicely and grovels. he can read a map Guadalcanal supported from Espiritu Santo is a much better option that defending Espiritu Santo supported from anywhere. Not that the Japanese can do anything, until very late in 42 the IJA can only provide 2 regiments for the whole of the Pacific. One is currently walking up the Kokoda track and eyeing up Hiro for lunch and the other is either shark food or wishing Hiro had been posted there.
Even if the IJN wins the naval battle at Midway, that doesn't mean they can actually succesfully invade Midway. From previous threads the consensus is that the invasion would fail. If they fail taking Midway, I don't think they'd fancy invading Oahu.
This is assuming of course that the invasion of Midway does indeed go ahead. If, as I proposed earlier, the invasion is omitted in favour of making the mission purely one of eliminating the American fleet, then...
Here is the latest PoD I can think of. That B-17 that almost crashed into the bridge of Akagi helps the Japanese out by killing Nagumo but hardly affecting carrier operations. Yamaguchi takes command, pulls out of range of American Air Power, scouts properly and finds all three carriers. Subsequent luck favors the Japanese and they sink two carriers for the price of one of their own, and knock the third out of action.
'Hardly affecting flight operations'? A multi engine aircraft crashing into Akagi is going to cripple her, if not sink her.
With sunk American Carriers, bombardment from battleships and planes, they would succeed.
If they hit the island/tower where the bridge is, like it was aiming for, no. If it went through the deck, with all that ordinance to cause lovely secondary explosions, you're right.
The Marine garrison not only outnumbered Ichiki and Ota's combat effectives, but also significantly outgunned them. Their tanks alone were something that neither Japanese unit had an answer for. And there was no formal Japanese doctrine for shore bombardment with battleships. What happened later at Guadalcanal was an anomaly.
The Midway landing force consisted of Ichiki's 2/28th (about 1000 men), who would storm Sand Island, and Ota's 2nd Combined SNLF (1500 men), who would take Eastern Island. The follow up force consisted of two construction battalions and a survey/weather group, all of which were minimally combat capable.
Carrier planes, and yes, not sunk carriers are a precondition for a successful invasion.
The Japanese Plan to Seize Midway
Prior to the epochal naval battle, Japan had formulated a detailed scheme to land troops and take the atoll by force. Would it have worked?
Strictly speaking the logistics problem was well understood by the Japanese. In 1940 it had required Eleven million tons of cargo shipping to service Japans imports/exports. That included supplies sent to the Army in Asia from the home islands, petroleum ports. BUT Japan possessed only six million tons of cargo ships. This included Navy and Army flagged cargo ships. Even with approximately one million tons of captured cargo ships, and German/Italian ships trapped in the Far East Japan was still 40% short of its minimum requirement. This short fall went into effect when the 1941 embargos started mid year. The US and Britain made sure all possible shipping was withdrawn from trade with Japan. The General staff knew they could not sustain sufficient numbers of soldiers for things like invading Hawaii. Or operation FS. This was one of the reasons Guadalcanal had only a single SNLF battalion guarding the airfield. The reinforced brigade thought necessary for that task could not be built up there. The planning for operation FS repeatedly cut the numbers to be used down from the initial estimate. Ditto for the Port Morby operations. The first attack plan had been slashed from a reinforced division to a brigade. The second attempt was barely a weak brigade, tho a division with extra support was required.
The Japanese leaders knew perfectly well what the cargo shipping problem was and what its effects would be. Desperation and Pride drove them to make these high risk operations anyway.
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Here's something?The Japanese Plan to Seize Midway
Prior to the epochal naval battle, Japan had formulated a detailed scheme to land troops and take the atoll by force. Would it have worked?www.usni.org
If the garrison was the size the Japanese estimated. Maybe. The reinforcements actually there were heavy on firepower, had deeply entrenched, and were a well trained and disciplined group. The landing/assualt plan was not designed to deal with any of that. It was a good plan for rapidly overrunning a weak and undertrained or prepared garrison. But that was not the situation. The SNLF battalion would have made a fight of it for a while. The Army detachment added in was used to fighting Chinese militia, and was grossly overconfident. These were from the same regiment that was massacred on the Tenaru River a few weeks later.
The last major battle the 2/28th participated in was Nomonhan, where they fought like lions to break out of a Soviet encirclement and were nearly annihilated. They were under a different commander from Ichiki during that fight (the superb Major Kajikawa, who succumbed in July 1941 to wounds he sustained at Nomonhan). Between Nomonhan and the Tenaru, they saw no action whatsoever and their depleted ranks were filled by many green replacements; few Nomonhan veterans were still with them by the time they were reconstituted for Midway and subsequent operations. The story of their Nomonhan tribulations is worth reading at length:
The most prominent Nomonhan vet still present in the 2/28th during the Pacific War was the brave and resourceful Captain Sawada, who very tellingly had misgivings about the Tenaru operation but was nonetheless the first man to attack across the sandbar with his 2nd Company. They were annihilated; a badly wounded Sawada returned to Ichiki and begged him to withdraw now that the initial assault had gone off half cocked, but was overruled. Sawada subsequently perished when the Marines counterattacked with their tanks.
One has to wonder how they would have fared had Kajikawa still been in charge instead of Ichiki.