HJ Tulp
Donor
Reading up on the Japanese invasion of South East Asia what strikes me is that the East Indian archipelago was apparently dotted by airfields. The Dutch idea was that bombers operating from these airfields could defend the East Indies against Japanese. The opposite was the effect though. The bombers only caused minor damages to the Japanese invasion fleets which pretty easily conquered the badly defended airfields.
The captured airfields allowed the IJN to make it's landings under the cover of land-based aircraft. Time and time again ABDAs Combined Strike Force was discovered and attacked by airplanes operating from those captured airfields. It seems to me that the balance of those airfields was very much in the negative for the Netherlands and ABDA.
Let's say that the Netherlands don't build airfields outside of Java or thoroughly destroy them at the start of the war. What do the Japanese do? I personally see three options:
I would love to hear what you guys think of this
The captured airfields allowed the IJN to make it's landings under the cover of land-based aircraft. Time and time again ABDAs Combined Strike Force was discovered and attacked by airplanes operating from those captured airfields. It seems to me that the balance of those airfields was very much in the negative for the Netherlands and ABDA.
Let's say that the Netherlands don't build airfields outside of Java or thoroughly destroy them at the start of the war. What do the Japanese do? I personally see three options:
- The Japanes advance to the edge of their aircover-range and build an airfield there. When it's finished the repeat the process. The major downside to this is that it costs a lot of time. One source I have read is that it cost the Japanese 70 days to build an airfield. The operations in the DEI were advanced with 30 days because the progress in Malaya was better than expected so there is some room in the plans but it's not much if Japan had to advance and build airfields in three steps.
- The Japanese advance only through the OTL western prong via Malaya and its airfields. This requires much fewer (or no) airfield building. This does mean there can only be a attack on Java from the west though. It also means that the allies can reinforce the rest of the Malay barrier at will.
- The Japanese forego their doctrine of land-based airsupport and use their carriers to provide the landing fleets with aircover. If the IJN does this will they follow the same steps as OTL? If they don't need the airfields they could also just go directly for Java. Of course the big problem for the Japanese is that this will mean they cannot use their carriers for other operations.
I would love to hear what you guys think of this