What if Wildcats completely replaced Brewster Buffaloes in Oct 1941?

Given how late the Wildcat came into production, is there any theoretical way the US COULD have replaced all Buffalos? Especially as they were short of planes, and a miraculous production of enough Wildcats for a 1-1 replacement would probably have left, what, 1/2 of the Buffalos still in service.

Well considering the F4F-3 was in production by September 1939 and Grumman had more production capability than they were using in both '40 and '41 yes it was more than possible to get enough Wildcats to replace the Buffaloes. It would take about an extra 12 per month.

Tom.
 
They would need the carriers anyway to supplement land-based air. Remember that Kido Butai did fly strikes during the Java campaign, and the Japanese Navy was the source of the Army's assault lift and covering forces. BOTH would be behind schedule and they'd have to adjust their plans accordingly.


You said yourself, they were ahead of schedule OTL so another two or three weeks would put it on schedule or maybe slightly behind. Why would you call in reinforcements when things are going more or less as planned?
 
Assuming a two-week delay, then....Bringing up Kido Butai supplements land-based bombers and fighters. Note that the long-range bombing in SEA at the time by the Japanese was exclusively a JNAF responsiblity, as the Japanese Army's bombers were geared more to combat on the Asian mainland. Kido Butai compliments the land-based bombers (Betties and Nells), and takes over when the bombers have to stand down (they'd do so every few days to catch up on maintenance). Once that Darwin raid Kido Butai launched goes in (OTL 19 Feb 42), there's not going to be much air interference from Australia, and also remember that none of the Allies had worked together very much prewar: and that did show OTL.
 
Well considering the F4F-3 was in production by September 1939 and Grumman had more production capability than they were using in both '40 and '41 yes it was more than possible to get enough Wildcats to replace the Buffaloes. It would take about an extra 12 per month.

Tom.
??? Wiki [ja, I know, wiki] says the first f4f3 was built in Feb 1940.... And seems to say that the US navy didn't accept it into service until October '41. (Although that last statement is ambiguous and may simply mean that they didn't name it Wildcat until then...)
 
Matt Wiser said:
Both unavailable for Midway-with well-known consequences.
Fact is, their presence made little difference. Could they've cost Fletcher another CV? Maybe. Would they've prevented Fletcher from hammering Nagumo? No. Fletcher had PBYs & good intel, so he knew Nagumo was coming; Yamamoto's dispositions were criminal.:eek:
Dathi THorfinnsson said:
?...may simply mean that they didn't name it Wildcat until then
I take that to mean they didn't accept the -3 for service til Oct '41.
Matt Wiser said:
most of the subs are American. With those wretched Mark-14 torpedoes.
A fair number from the Asiatic Fleet, which would be the main striking force, were Sugar boats with Mark Xs, which worked just fine.:cool: A fair number (IDK how many...) were Brit, Oz, & Dutch, which had torpedoes with perfectly good contact exploders, at least...:rolleyes:
ONE or two (at best).
Most of the OTL failure was in poor deployments & less than competent leadership. Not, at this time, due to Fife being a nitwit; that was later.:rolleyes:
You do know the history of that fiasco, don't you? BuOrd (the USN's Bureau of Ordnance) blamed the sub skippers. The Skippers blamed BuOrd for saddling them with a weapon nearly useless. The fixes that were made were well after the NEI campaign ended (running too deep, crappy magnetic exploder, poorly designed contact exploder).....It took no less than Admiral King himself to light a fire under BuOrd's rear end to get them to admit the weapon was faulty: all fixes were ID'd and made in the field, it should be pointed out. Having several guys who worked on the Mark-14 be in senior leadership positions in the sub force didn't help any-not to mention their stubborn refusal to listen to their skippers, being reluctant to admit their work may have been faulty.
All true.:mad::mad: To be clear, tho, it's not all the fault of the Mk 14. It ran deep, & BuOrd didn't know it, but it was easily & readily fixed. The real problem was in the Mk 6 exploder. The magnetic feature didn't work for shat,:eek: & the contact pistol was too delicate, too.:eek::rolleyes: These problems weren't corrected until Sept '43,:eek::eek: over the active resistance of BuOrd all the way along,:mad: including at least one case of an "inspector" who actually tampered with a torpedo so it wouldn't have run correctly.:eek::mad: (Recorded in Blair for those who can't imagine it.;)) Christie, who was project officer on the Mk 6, was SWPA's senior sub officer (ComSubSoWesPac).

IMO, Christie deserved court martial, both for design of the Mk 6 & for refusing to believe his skippers. English, too, for refusing to believe. I call that dereliction. Jimmy Fife deserved a bullet in the back of the head.:mad: His screwing about with subs got at least two sunk.:mad: And IDK who to blame for basing in Oz in the first place, Nimitz or King; it was stupid.:eek: It probably lengthened the war 6mo or a year.:eek:
 
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??? Wiki [ja, I know, wiki] says the first f4f3 was built in Feb 1940.... And seems to say that the US navy didn't accept it into service until October '41. (Although that last statement is ambiguous and may simply mean that they didn't name it Wildcat until then...)

As per below, production started in Aug 1939, first deliveries to the Navy in Feb 1940.

http://www.chuckhawks.com/f4f.htm
And
http://www.militaryfactory.com/aircraft/detail.asp?aircraft_id=89

Now a couple of references say production started in August 1939, first delivery in February 1940, but acceptance wasn't until January 1941.

http://www.vectorsite.net/avwcat.html

All of which tells me there is room to speed up acceptance and production in the 1940/early 1941 period.

Tom.
 
I take that to mean they didn't accept the -3 for service til Oct '41.

The trouble is that Wiki doesn't agree with any other source I have seen on this, everyone else says the -3 was accepted for service in January '41 and by October they had replaced most of the Carrier based Buffaloes.

Remember Grumman was selling these things overseas, Britain got its first kill with a Martlet I (aka F4F-3) over Scapa Flow on December 25, 1940. So they were in production and in service with someones Navy in December 1940.

Now the F4F-4 was based on British comments/requests and deliveries to the USN started in November 1941 so maybe that is the October '41 date that Wiki referred to.

Tom.
 
Assuming a two-week delay, then....Bringing up Kido Butai supplements land-based bombers and fighters. Note that the long-range bombing in SEA at the time by the Japanese was exclusively a JNAF responsiblity, as the Japanese Army's bombers were geared more to combat on the Asian mainland. Kido Butai compliments the land-based bombers (Betties and Nells), and takes over when the bombers have to stand down (they'd do so every few days to catch up on maintenance). Once that Darwin raid Kido Butai launched goes in (OTL 19 Feb 42), there's not going to be much air interference from Australia, and also remember that none of the Allies had worked together very much prewar: and that did show OTL.

Set it to at least 3 days behind schedule, and that is being generous to the Japanese. This assumes that the day they are behind schedle they ask for reinforcements and that said reinforcements arrive 3 days later. More likely due to the fact that interservice rivalry will make the army reluctant to call in the navy and there will be some discussion in the navy how to send it a week is more likely.
 
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tchizek said:
All of which tells me there is room to speed up acceptance and production in the 1940/early 1941 period.
It does raise a question of "What caused the delay?" Same question arises in connection with the F4U, which was also delayed a long time. If some of it was lack of urgency, yes, it could be accelerated. If not... (I'd be interested to know for both cases, actually.)
 
It does raise a question of "What caused the delay?" Same question arises in connection with the F4U, which was also delayed a long time. If some of it was lack of urgency, yes, it could be accelerated. If not... (I'd be interested to know for both cases, actually.)

Mostly a peacetime lack of urgency. The military still had a peacetime mindset in 1940 and 1941 which is part of the reason it was caught napping. Things definitely could have been sped up as the money was there. Things really took off in 1942. I just sped up the process slightly.
 
Johnrankins said:
Mostly a peacetime lack of urgency. The military still had a peacetime mindset
That being true, how do you see it being kicked off? Who'd have to go? Or have a House moment?:p
 
That being true, how do you see it being kicked off? Who'd have to go? Or have a House moment?:p

There was a 1939 report from the Naval Attache in Japan from the Tokyo air show where the INJ displayed a pre-production A6M complete with a specification sheet. He even got to talk to one of the developers, sat in the cockpit, looked over the aircraft from front to back, they would not let him take notes but other than that he had full access. The Naval Attache wrote up a complete report of the new Japanese fighter along with his impression of the designer and test pilots he talked to (very, very impressed). It got to Washington in July of '39 and was filed by Naval Intelligence as "impossible". POD is the report is passed on as "interesting, maybe you should know about this". Which pushes procurement to get something better than the Buffalo - which by 1939 was known to be obsolete. The only choice right then is the Wildcat so they increase their orders and move up acceptance, not getting ASB so let's only move it up from January '40 to November '39, and move the F4F-4 up from September '41 to July '41. So they push Grumman to increase production early, moving Grumman from one shift to two in January 1940 to meet requests from the US and UK. Then to three shifts in November 1940. Which should more than double OTL production fairly easily just by increasing the urgency of the requests. As far as I can tell in OTL Grumman changed to two shifts about the same time they switched to the -4 production in July '41 and to three shifts in January '42.

So by October 1941 the USMC is flying all F4F-3 and the USN is a mix of F4F-3 and F4F-4. The F2As have all been transferred to the Dutch East Indies, Austria, or Singapore (probably in that order of priority). With the increased production of Wildcats figure the British probably got more F4F-4 (Martlet II) as well which helps there carrier air groups quite a bit.

Tom.
 
There was a 1939 report from the Naval Attache in Japan from the Tokyo air show where the INJ displayed a pre-production A6M complete with a specification sheet. He even got to talk to one of the developers, sat in the cockpit, looked over the aircraft from front to back, they would not let him take notes but other than that he had full access. The Naval Attache wrote up a complete report of the new Japanese fighter along with his impression of the designer and test pilots he talked to (very, very impressed). It got to Washington in July of '39 and was filed by Naval Intelligence as "impossible". POD is the report is passed on as "interesting, maybe you should know about this". Which pushes procurement to get something better than the Buffalo - which by 1939 was known to be obsolete. The only choice right then is the Wildcat so they increase their orders and move up acceptance, not getting ASB so let's only move it up from January '40 to November '39, and move the F4F-4 up from September '41 to July '41. So they push Grumman to increase production early, moving Grumman from one shift to two in January 1940 to meet requests from the US and UK. Then to three shifts in November 1940. Which should more than double OTL production fairly easily just by increasing the urgency of the requests. As far as I can tell in OTL Grumman changed to two shifts about the same time they switched to the -4 production in July '41 and to three shifts in January '42.

So by October 1941 the USMC is flying all F4F-3 and the USN is a mix of F4F-3 and F4F-4. The F2As have all been transferred to the Dutch East Indies, Austria, or Singapore (probably in that order of priority). With the increased production of Wildcats figure the British probably got more F4F-4 (Martlet II) as well which helps there carrier air groups quite a bit.

Tom.
Hmmm... I like this. I think it's a bit unlikely that anyone in Washington would believe Japanese technical competence, but occasional bouts of sanity have happened in the past, and could have here.
 
Hmmm... I like this. I think it's a bit unlikely that anyone in Washington would believe Japanese technical competence, but occasional bouts of sanity have happened in the past, and could have here.

Well I didn't have them necessarily believe but rather think that maybe this new A6M was enough better than the A5M that they needed to get the Wildcat into production.

After all they don't have to believe the range numbers (but they can figure the Japanese exaggerated 50% which still puts it at 1200mile range), they don't know how maneuverable it is, but they do have the armament (2x20mm and 2x7.7mm) and the prototype had was shown with armor and self-sealing tanks. So with this the Wildcat is a good match but the Buffalo is outmatched.

Tom.
 
tchizek said:
There was a 1939 report from the Naval Attache in Japan from the Tokyo air show
I did not know about this... Thx!

That said, is this the same report derided as fiction...?:eek::rolleyes:
 
How's this for irony: that officer (Cdr. Steven Jurika) was the air intelligence officer on U.S.S. Hornet for the Doolittle Raid. He brought his old files out with him when he left Japan in Oct '41, knowing they'd come in handy one day.
 
How's this for irony: that officer (Cdr. Steven Jurika) was the air intelligence officer on U.S.S. Hornet for the Doolittle Raid. He brought his old files out with him when he left Japan in Oct '41, knowing they'd come in handy one day.

How cool is that! Another detail I hadn't heard about, thanks!
 
I did not know about this... Thx!

That said, is this the same report derided as fiction...?:eek::rolleyes:

Well that was basically what happened OTL, it was junked as "impossible". I suppose it would be even worse if it was passed around as "joke material".
 
Assuming they take the DEI 2 /12 to 3 weeks later than OTL how does this effect the rest of the war? At the very least some of the other islands should be strengthened. Do the Japanese simply dig in the islands they already have or try to spread further like in OTL. At the very least the "Victory Disease" should be less intense which is good for the Japanese. On the other hand they lost more men and matériel.
 
How cool is that! Another detail I hadn't heard about, thanks!


You're welcome. Btw, he wasn't the Naval Attache' but the Assistant Attache for Air. The Japanese Air Forces (Naval and Army) were his specialty, along with learning as much as possible about Japan's industries. Jurika actually helped with target selection and advised aircrew to make sure they didn't crash-land in Japan, as he expected anyone who did so to be executed.

If they take the NEI 2-3 weeks later, it doesn't affect the course of the war that much: They were in Borneo, Ambon/Timor, and the Celebes in Jan-Feb, so you're expecting either Sumatra or Java to hold out longer than they did. Once Singapore falls, Sumatra is only a matter of time. Java was the last one, so if Java holds out, the Japanese simply consolidate their previous gains, maybe bring additional land-based air assets in-theater, along with Kido Butai, and mass for the final assault. They were a month ahead of schedule-the Java invasion was originally set for April '42. It would give the Dutch time to attempt to destroy oil facilities-and they did accomplish some demolition, but most were still captured intact OTL. The Sumatran fields were seized intact, by Japanese Naval Landing Force paratroopers, so you might even see additional airborne landings to go along with the actual amphibious operation. It may, however, bring Kido Butai home early-they were on their way home OTL from the IO Raid when the Doolittle Raid went in, so they'd be recalled from SEA post-haste.....but there would be by that time, ample land-based Naval Air assets (21st, 22nd, and 23rd Air Flotillas) to handle things.
 
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