Rearm the ANZACs for the Pacific War.
- Thread starter Peg Leg Pom
- Start date
6 million people in 1930. Where are you flying to?
Australia has always loved flying because it eats the distance up. But there is literally nowhere to fly to that needs more than a dirt strip and some old drums. And WWI means that there are already too many pilots.
Besides if you need airstrips in Australia for defence it means the English, French, US, and Dutch have already been defeated in SEA. Like that is ever going to happen.
McPherson
Banned
I know that is purely tongue in cheek but...
If you want peace, prepare for war?
Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus or Sima Qian, I forget which one coined it.
Ehh plenty of countries have undertaken infrastructure/colonization projects in specific areas of territories that they feel are threatened to need to be secured against foreign claim. While the Dutch obviously aren't going to be invading Australia the Dutch control of the DEI was pretty weak from what I understand (With the reason that the weak late 19th/early 20th century Dutch were able to keep the DEI being a matter of neutrality and that the Dutch holding the DEI meant that no one else got it. Sort of like Belgium with the Congo.). Fear of another country forcing the Dutch to sell might appear plausible. Perhaps have the Dutch seem more pro Central Power/more likely to actually enter WW1 on the side of the CP. That helps to make the Australians a little more paranoid about the North with the Yellow press during WW1 making up some realistically implausible schemes like the Germans sending a massive fleet to their new Colony/ally in the East Indies.
And even without the Japanese actually conquering the Phillipines, Malay, the DEI raids of various sorts on Northern Australia would seem plausible. An increase in bare bones facilities that could be militarized if need be could be potrayed within the military/government as a way of protecting Australian trade either from direct attack by AMCs/Submarines or the more unlikely potential for a enemy nation to land a force in the virtually undefended North and use it as a base to resupply raiders to attack Australian shipping/the other more populated areas of Australia by sea.
Someone else still sees a waste of material & manpower. Subs based there are bound to be under Japanese air, which is going to cut into effectiveness, not least by drastically increasing transit times to patrol stations. (I am aware we disagree fairly strongly on this issue, & I'm not aiming to re-litigate it.
{Anybody who wants to see sides presented should consult the torpedo thread in McP's sig.})I'd be flexible on the standard. AIUI, the Red Army put a 5'6" maximum on tank drivers at one time.
Driftless
Donor
Didn't the French, at one point - 1950's - 70's?, draw on the shortest 5% of their recruits for their armored force?
Funny line from a guy who constantly shouted and had a larger personal arsenal then some countries.
I visited the NRA museum once and they had a TR room including some of his personal arsenal. I think their had to be over 100 pistols and long arms and it was only a portion of his real collection.
McPherson
Banned
Darwin to Timor is inside P-38 range. (About 500 miles or 750 kilometers). WHY is that important?Someone else still sees a waste of material & manpower. Subs based there are bound to be under Japanese air, which is going to cut into effectiveness, not least by drastically increasing transit times to patrol stations. (I am aware we disagree fairly strongly on this issue, & I'm not aiming to re-litigate it.
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"How come the yanks were silly enough to turn Darwin into a sub base? Don't they know about the tides and the shallows and reefs to the north? of the harbor?"
"Shhh!"
"Why are you shhhing me?"
"They were also dumb enough to put in the finger pier, and breakwater in; and build the airfields where their bombers take off to bomb Timor and points north and northwest. Got to have fighters to protect the bombers and those fighters protect us."
Oxygen Group Photography : Australia, New Zealand ...
Called Balmey_1
Called "Synergistics", it is an op-art concept where logistics and infrastructure are combined with a sub and air campaign and a series of amphib assaults to give Blamey and his crew something to do besides sit on the sidelines while Mister Corncob Pipe and Alamo Force are doing their thing. Kick off with Timor and muscle through to the Celebes Sea. No need for a huge fleet as long as air superiority (RIKKOs) can be navally achieved.
The subs (Mackerels) just snort their way into the South China sea. There is a REASON why I put the snorts into the boats and have Colonel Waterhouse building that damned railroad to Darwin in my ATL treatment.
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Noted. I'm not familiar enough with it to say it's a bad idea, so I won't.
I'm philosophically on the other side (so to speak): garotte the Japanese war effort at the Home Islands, & let the island bases act as traps & resource drains. It's slow, & it doesn't produce gorgeous fleet actions & big-budget movies, but it works. (Yeah, I know, it leaves the bulk of the USN swinging at anchor with the crews tearing up Honolulu for four years, which could do more harm than an invasion.
There's always a downside.)With that, I'll desist. As said, see the mentioned thread for what both sides of the issue look like in practise. (Do discount my posts therein somewhat. I was giving the Sub Force a bit too much effectiveness. Target-rich environments are hard to resist.
)"Hmm Nearly there. All we need to do is figure out how to sew a few more thumbs onto each of them and we've got it."
McPherson
Banned
It could work. How long does one estimate it will take?I'm philosophically on the other side (so to speak): garotte the Japanese war effort at the Home Islands, & let the island bases act as traps & resource drains. It's slow, & it doesn't produce gorgeous fleet actions & big-budget movies, but it works. (Yeah, I know, it leaves the bulk of the USN swinging at anchor with the crews tearing up Honolulu for four years, which could do more harm than an invasion.
But the question is where? I know your views on Singapore but that is what all the Asian colonies are being told by the professionals is the magic silver bullet. If not that, the Philippines.
Should limited Depression Australian Pounds be spent on local defence or supporting the plans of the great ally? That is a big question even today.
McPherson
Banned
Bluntly? Australia was abused.
One can invoke hindsight. We have a nation about the population size and economic power of New York City at the time, that was asked to step up and do the work of France in the Pacific War.
She was asked to feed a huge navy and air force (not her own) and to supply a field army (her own as well as her allies) that was about 1/4 the size of the forces liberating France. THINK about that one.
Since then, she has been tasked with covering the Southwest Pacific Ocean Area, which is essentially the same mission as WWII.
Now I am anti-colonial imperialist interloper by temperament and I think whoever is local needs to be let alone to solve their own problems their own way, but that has not been allowed to Australia. I am an American and I cannot answer Australia's questions for Australians.
What I can say objectively, is that Australia in WWII had very little choice as a practical matter. She had to have an ally's help to secure her own sovereignty and national right to exist as a free state.
Britain for various reasons failed to do that for Australia in the 1930s. I am not going into the politics, but I have a certain Singapore Bastion Defense bias that has been mentioned. If you want my opinion PM me as it is tangent to this topic.
In the context of ANZAC re-armament, the criteria for 1930s options boils down to three areas.
Infrastructure. The threat axis is from the north. The productivity centers are in the southeast and wrap around to the south. The primary forward positions: Darwin, Port Moresby and RABAUL; are virtual geographic islands isolated from the southern areas by lack of economical transportation access across deserts and oceans and northern SWAMPS. The answer is a railroad from Adelaide to Darwin and shallow draft freighter passenger ferries from Darwin to Moresby and then freighters from there to Rabaul. All three sites should have been aerodromed out the wazoo and Moresby and Rabaul heavily land and air garrisoned and provisioned to stand siege. THAT is Alfred Thayer Mahan, the Australia version.
Economics.
Learn to build cars and locomotives locally. You have a FREAKING MINERAL TREASURE HOUSE in New Caledonia right next to Australia. Need iron, nickel, coke, molybdenum and trace rare earths for steels? Send ships, load ore and smelt baby, smelt. It does not have to be a large steel industry but it has to be a GOOD one.
Politics.
Empire is a manure fest. There, I wrote it. Canberra has to decide whether to answer the London bankers or the Australian voters. I have no say in that matter. From my read of Australian history, it has been a tense tensor between the socialist laity and the upper crust as to how the government functioned in matters of economic policy, internal development and how the tax levy was to be used.
I have my opinions of the era, but...
and
...not even historically.
But as an American, I can say for Americans, "1776".
There are three main variables: sustained force, sinkings/patrol, & turnaround time. The goal is achieving the OTL sinkings of about 4 million tons, & OTL that took (as you doubtless guessed) 44 months. The OTL tonnage/patrol was around 4000 tons, & the "turnaround factor" was .375; reducing time in refit wasn't the issue as much as transit time, making Midway a big help.
Given patrols in Empire Waters, Yellow Sea, & Luzon/Formosa Straits produced about double the sinkings/patrol of patrols to elsewhere out of Hawaii, & given patrols out of Oz were about 75% (IIRC) more likely to sink nothing, with the OTL sustained force (65 boats), it should be in the range of 18-25 months, assuming nothing else (beyond moving all boats to Pearl) changes. (I can't give you a better number just off the top of my head.)
You give me a #1 priority on sinking tankers on 8 Dec '41, it'll be sooner.
Edit:
I should also point out, contrary to common belief (including mine until I came across this), & counterintuitively, high duration on patrol isn't as advantageous as rapid deployment: an S-boat that could manage 30 knots surfaced & only stay three weeks would actually be preferable to a fleet boat running at 20 & staying two months. That's where the "turnaround factor" kicks in.
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I get that. What I'm getting at with the SWPA deployments is, you've created large numbers of dry patrols on top of the large number of diversions from the most-productive area(s). That's why I've said, pull the subs back, entire, to Hawaii. Shorten the supply chain, concentrate the refits (so faster updates with radar), concentrate info exchange between skippers, maybe (just) increase the pressure on English to fix the Mark VI...& fairly dramatically increase the tonnages being sunk. It doesn't take doing anything new or drastic on top of that, crazy as success in as little as 25mo sounds.
For the record, a correction: my math is off a bit, & my recall of the formula clearly a bit faulty, because 65 boats gives 39mo when it should be 44, while the (correct) 4278 ton average/patrol with 60 boats gives 42 (& I recall the sustained force was 65)...
Cheers
Banks & Empire
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There’s a big problem there with Australia solving other peoples problems within Australia and overseas. Australia feared and hated the imaginary Chinese dislocating mass migrant; Australia feared and hated the barbarous war criminal Jap. *Because that was white australia*.
Australian National Shipping Line and ports. Problem: Seaman’s, Wharfies, Banks.
Well BHP was yanks and Lysaghts were strikers.
I think you mean London bankers or Australian manufacturers but.
Four way:
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