War Plan: RED-ORANGE

So I read an interesting overview of the US war plan RED-ORANGE which was a strategy for conducting a war against a coalition of the UK and Imperial Japan. Now I know war pan RED has been done to death on AH.com but I noted one of the quotes stated by the Army-Navy Joint Planning Board of the state of readiness of the United States for an invasion of the Pacific:

"If 200,000 men of any first class hostile power should be landed on our Pacific Coast, we should have no course but to hand over to a foreign nation the rich empire west of the Rockies, with its cities, its harbors, and the wealth of its valleys and mountains."

Source:http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/war-plan-red-orange.htm

Do you think the Joint Planning Board was correct in this scenario? Would it really be that easy for a power like Japan to carve apart the early 20th century western states of the USA (I believe the above statement was made during the Woodrow Wilson era)? What would a Pacific invasion of the US by a RED-ORANGE Coalition look like?
 
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Do you think the Joint Planning Board was correct in this scenario? Would it really be that easy for a power like Japan to carve apart the early 20th century western states of the USA (I believe the above statement was made during the Woodrow Wilson era)? What would a Pacific invasion of the US by a RED-ORANGE Coalition look like?
I've no idea how difficult it would be to dislodge them, but actually landing 200,000 troops of the British and Japanese Armies on the west coast of the United States would make Sealion and a simultaneous Japanese invasion of Hawaii look straightforward. :eek:
 
If the Anglo-Japanese land these 200,000 men out of the blue, then yes I suspect that they could take the West Coast. But it's impossible to conduct a trans-oceanic amphibious invasion with 200,000 men without the enemy knowing about it months in advance, so realistically these 200,000 soldiers would be faced with a brand new army raised specifically to counter them.
 
The problem is bringing those 200k "first-class" troops to the West coast in the first place - and much more difficult to keep them supplied.

I also bet 200k on the East coast woul be a problem for the US Army - and the East coast is probably better accessible to the British navy too...

HAnd over might not be a Transfer of ownership, it might be difficult to HOLD it, but teconquering it after a time of buildup should be possible.
 

fred1451

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The problem is bringing those 200k "first-class" troops to the West coast in the first place - and much more difficult to keep them supplied.

I also bet 200k on the East coast woul be a problem for the US Army - and the East coast is probably better accessible to the British navy too...

HAnd over might not be a Transfer of ownership, it might be difficult to HOLD it, but teconquering it after a time of buildup should be possible.
Exactly how hard would it be to land them in Vancouver in peacetime and then invade
Washington overland?

I doubt the US would start a war by sinking the transports as they brought the troops in. Once the War starts it would be a little difficult to get supplies and replacements into the theater of operations, but the initial troop placements? Piffle!
 
How is the US not going to notice an absolutely massive military mobilisation in the United Kingdom and Japan in what is, presumably, a time of diplomatic tension with those powers? In particular, has Canada suddenly turned into an isolated police state where no news gets in or out? Even if that were so, spy planes and both electronic and human intelligence ought to give the USA some idea of a mobilisation of that magnitude. Such strategic surprise as Barbarossa is very rare and depended on Joseph Stalin personally ignoring intelligence in favour of self-deluding ideological conviction.

I'm not one of those who believe it's impossible for the USA to lose a major war in the 20th century; an alliance of multiple great powers (necessarily including the British Empire and at least one of Germany and France, and preferably a lot more than that), with naval superiority over the US Navy (not that hard) and Canada as a base of operations that's virtually impossible for the USA to swiftly conquer because of its sheer size as well as military resistance there, could quite possibly have done it if it were able to subdue any pro-American powers in Europe, due to the advantages of equal or superior industrial capacity that would be untouched by any American action while American transport links and cities alike could be bombed and bombarded with impunity. The easiest way to imagine such a scenario would be to avoid the First World War trashing Europe—have it be shorter or, quite possibly, non-existent—and have the USA take some radically anti-imperialist turn, busily supplying anti-imperialist movements in colonies in such a bold manner as to provoke multiple major imperialist powers to the conclusion that it cannot be allowed to continue to exist; one can also imagine, for instance, the Old World going largely socialist while the USA doesn't, or vice versa, though those are harder scenarios to make plausible. But it would take a combination of enemies more potent than just the British and Japanese, and it wouldn't just be a case of suddenly landing a giant army on the US western seaboard with the element of surprise. It would be less War Plan Red and more War Plan Rainbow.

Frankly, that comment on surrendering everything west of the Rockies looks to me like a case of the very old tendency of senior military leaders to exaggerate enemy threats in order to get more funding.
 
Frankly, that comment on surrendering everything west of the Rockies looks to me like a case of the very old tendency of senior military leaders to exaggerate enemy threats in order to get more funding.

This.

With 200,000 men in a country as vast the US, you could have hold 3 enclaves (Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle) and do some long range patrolling around but nothing else.
 
That can be enough to get a favorable peace settlement, provided terms aren't ridiculous.

Especially if you can bring airpower in eventually and do some damage that way.


I think the US could eventually get it back- but it would take 3-4 years of a hard slog, and in such a scenario- the UK could bring in colonial troops or other troops. Partisan activity would be a real problem for the UK+Japan in this case, especially if colonials are used.

Also, would Mexico gang up on the US as well, that would give them even more problems.
 
Would Japan have the logistic to hold on to their foothold? I think it would depend on the time period (size of navy) and especially if they have other wars to fight (China). Otherwise, if they are working with the British, they would have to rely on the British for supplies and food and what not. Also if that many British forces on that size of the USA, how long until eastern Canada is taken? I think it would be a matter of starving the invasion forces before they can no longer fight and are pushed back.
 
War Plan Red + Orange

There is a 20 page discussion thread on spacebattles.com (1) dating from 2009 that goes a long way towards answering a lot of these questions. However, that it was set in 1942 (ATL, no WWII, UK + Japan versus USA) didn't stop the thread from becoming a full on flame war. It was unusual in that the overwhelming number of posters were Americans AND Britons who thought that the three posters arguing for a British-Japanese uber-alles were from the Twilight Zone. Its normal here to have the reverse be true, but then I've never seen a UK vs. USA thread set so late in history. Its usually set in the American Civil War or some other time in the 19th to VERY early 20th centuries (say, up to 1910).

1) Ultimately the consensus was that beyond Pearl Harbor and taking the Philippines and other Pacific possessions logistics will neutralize the Japanese, as a 2000 mile distance just from Hawaii alone to the US West Coast (never mind the distances added on from Japan to Hawaii) makes their participation problematical at best.

Handwaving the First World War puts us into if not ASB land at least something so far from OTL that it becomes a complete fantasy rather than anything remotely like our own. But if you want to do that, then you are still leaving the old imperial players intact and ready to fight in a circumstance where a deeply committed UK in the North Atlantic plus North American waters (Eastern, Gulf, AND West Coasts!?) means that the Germans are free to sortie their own fleet at will. Otherwise, to make this work seriously, you have to handwave the Franco-Prussian and Austro-Hungarian Wars plus God knows what else.

If you have a WWI, then by 1920 (with rising tensions) and no Washington Naval Treaty, the Royal Navy is looking down the barrel of a relatively fresh US Navy that has numerical equivalency while the RN is stuck with a mass of pre-dreadnoughts and worn out dreadnoughts. The only major equalizer being that ALL dreadnoughts have become obsolete post-Jutland. The only major advantage for the RN is having a greater force of destroyers, except that the USN has already done much to address this imbalance and can do much more.

The earlier the war, the better the Royal Navy can do on its own, but also the less the Japanese can contribute. Another equalizer where you would expect a British advantage. Japan has its own issues with China and Russia.
 
Would Japan have the logistic to hold on to their foothold? I think it would depend on the time period (size of navy) and especially if they have other wars to fight (China). Otherwise, if they are working with the British, they would have to rely on the British for supplies and food and what not. Also if that many British forces on that size of the USA, how long until eastern Canada is taken? I think it would be a matter of starving the invasion forces before they can no longer fight and are pushed back.

Depending on the year or decade, Canada in the end is a lost cause for the British. Vancouver Island is neither the UK on D-Day nor Gibraltar...ever.

So much depends on who is the aggressor. If the USA is Pearl Harbor'ed because the British and their Japanese allies want to clear out the Pacific and Atlantic "for themselves", IOW for reasons of purest imperialism, the British will hold on to Newfoundland, Labrador, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, and that's IT. Not even that, if this is happening in the age of modern military aircraft (+1929) and CV's, the latter of which was a real problem for the RN (though certainly NOT the Japanese). And goodbye to the Caribbean colonies.
 
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