WI. Allies launch a "Halifax Explosion" type attack in WW2.

Let me see... you have spent years planning the invasion of Europe to the nth degree, had shore parties checking beach composition, sand / shingle, gradients for beaching landing craft and exiting tanks and wheleed vehicles from the beaches, designed funnies to flail for mines or lay giant fabric pathways across the sand, etc. - and now you intend to change the geography a couple of hours before the troops are due to land?

Have you ever considered a staff role with the IJN?
:closedeyesmile::closedeyesmile::closedeyesmile::closedeyesmile:
 
Captain Scarface was an old Korean War era B-movie that featured an attack on the Panama Canal using a freighter with a nuke hidden onboard. The "fanatical and nefarious commies" were going to suicide bomb the Gatun locks to put the Panama Canal out of action for several months so as to slow the U.S Navy's reinforcing of the Pacific fleet. A fine old B-movie melodrama for sure.

But the thing is if the tight security the Americans maintained at Panama during WW2 was not present than this type of attack might have succeeded. No nuclear bomb required. Just several thousand tons of high explosives packed into the hold of a freighter sitting right in the Gatun lock.
 
But the thing is if the tight security the Americans maintained at Panama during WW2 was not present than this type of attack might have succeeded. No nuclear bomb required. Just several thousand tons of high explosives packed into the hold of a freighter sitting right in the Gatun lock.

Or an I-400 attack...
 
Do you mean the planes launched from the I-400 type submarines? Not a very big bomb load. I don't think they would have accomplished very much damage.

The Aichi M6A carried a Type 91 torpedo. Enough to kill a lock gate, considering japanese torpedoes...
 
It may get tossed onto the dock, but toppled over does not sound correct. I don't you topple over ships with even 125 Kiloton bombs, this is more the megaton range.
Didn’t shot Baker stand a warship on end during its test, and that was only about Hiroshima size, not megatons?
 

nbcman

Donor
The Aichi M6A carried a Type 91 torpedo. Enough to kill a lock gate, considering japanese torpedoes...
Assuming a slow moving float plane can somehow make it past at least two squadrons of P-38 pursuit aircraft and anti-aircraft defenses there - not to mention whether a I-400 sub can make it across the entire Pacific ocean in 1945. Note that a Type 91 torpedo didn't have an appreciably larger warhead than other airdropped torpedoes (713 pounds vs 600 pounds for a US Mark 13). It was the Type 93 torpedoes that had the much larger warheads (almost 1100 pounds).
 
Assuming a slow moving float plane can somehow make it past at least two squadrons of P-38 pursuit aircraft and anti-aircraft defenses there - not to mention whether a I-400 sub can make it across the entire Pacific ocean in 1945. Note that a Type 91 torpedo didn't have an appreciably larger warhead than other airdropped torpedoes (713 pounds vs 600 pounds for a US Mark 13). It was the Type 93 torpedoes that had the much larger warheads (almost 1100 pounds).

I never said it would be easy. It would pretty much be a kamikaze mission by multiple subs, each with it's group of planes. But I think they'd still have a better chance of scoring a hit that of a ship sailing up and going booom
 
Good luck for finding a crew for a literal suicide mission.

Pretty much. This isn't ASB, but it makes no sense whatsoever. Most targets are either too heavily fortified or just not practical enough to reach with an attack. No major surface ships would fall for a trick like this and probably use it for target practice far enough away to not be endangered.

Most worthwhile targets in Europe by 1942 or 1943 at best can also be plastered with hundreds or thousands of tons of bombs from airstrikes.

That plus the fact that any crew that would go on this mission is essentially committing suicide.
 
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