WI: Kamikaze's main focus is bombers over Japan?

CalBear

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Wasn't the USN pushing for a fake landing, with the landing ships full of rockets, as another way of thinning out the kamikazes?
Yep. They even sent the gun line into start bombardments. They had BB, CA, & CL shelling Japanese shore installations.

Japanese wouldn't bite. Frustrated the hell out of Halsey.

The Japanese had made the entirely correct decision that the only way to stop the invasion was to kill the troops before they disembarked. Troop ships were going to be the kamikaze targets, while what was left of the JNAF strike squadrons was slated to go after the carriers at the same time. The idea was to wait for about two days, when the American pilots and deck crews would be tired, and the gunners exhausted from days of constant alert, then hit the invasion force with anything that flew, including about 5,000 suicide planes, in waves of around 400 aircraft per hour on the first day of strikes, before the troops disembarked. The carriers would be distracted with a series of massive strikes by both kamikazes, and much more importantly, what was left of the JNAF (mostly hard core veterans who had survived the Pacific War and instructors) flying conventional strike profiles, around 550 strike aircraft were available.
 

CalBear

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@CalBear :

Damn, they thought of everything. :(
They had also figured out every single landing beach. They were busily per-registering artillery for every beach, every beach exit, had begun to put in underwater "bunkers" for suicide swimmers who could remain in them until the landing craft chugged over, then the swimmer would just float up with a charge and blow the bottom out of a LCM or LVT (no one in the U.S. chain of command ever tripped to this one until the war was over, so no depth charges to disrupt these poor souls were planned).

Would have been...

...interesting.
 
Interesting is a gross understatement. If even half the stuff I've read about Olympic and Coronet is true, the Americans would have been fighting knee deep in blood. Mostly their own. The American brass was so nervous about the invasion of Japan, that they were actively ducking giving Truman the projection casuality figures because they were afraid that the nightmare scenario might turn out to be the conservative estimate.
 
The story of the Tachikawa Ki-94II is interesting.

tachikawa_ki-94.gif


Its designer, Tatsuo Hasegawa was also a chief designer of the Toyota Corolla. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatsuo_Hasegawa
 
Interesting is a gross understatement. If even half the stuff I've read about Olympic and Coronet is true, the Americans would have been fighting knee deep in blood. Mostly their own. The American brass was so nervous about the invasion of Japan, that they were actively ducking giving Truman the projection casuality figures because they were afraid that the nightmare scenario might turn out to be the conservative estimate.

it would have changed the war, even though it was already over. The holocaust would be nothing in comparison.
 

Pangur

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They had also figured out every single landing beach. They were busily per-registering artillery for every beach, every beach exit, had begun to put in underwater "bunkers" for suicide swimmers who could remain in them until the landing craft chugged over, then the swimmer would just float up with a charge and blow the bottom out of a LCM or LVT (no one in the U.S. chain of command ever tripped to this one until the war was over, so no depth charges to disrupt these poor souls were planned).

Would have been...

...interesting.

That would have been down right ugly for the US forces. Mind you grenades in the water would certainly incapacitate the swimmers
 
Lemme put it this way. The US minted up about 500,000 purple hearts for the first wave. They have still to actually exhaust that stockpile in every war and peacekeeping action since.

Knew that, just thought the US would have an easier time, kinda like how the Allies played Germany, or no worse than the previous islands (which were bad, but doable). This sounds like like the Red Army's preparations for Kursk. The US might have low-balled the number of Purple Heart's needed.
 

CalBear

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Lemme put it this way. The US minted up about 500,000 purple hearts for the first wave. They have still to actually exhaust that stockpile in every war and peacekeeping action since.
IIRC they finally ran out a couple years back. Still have plenty of Silver Star, DSC, Navy Cross etc. on tap.
 
Wait a second...

The Japanese believed that the only chance they had to defeat an invasion was to strike at the troop carriers before they landed. But they didn't respond to bombardments that were supposed to look like the first stage of such an invasion. Was their intelligence still up to the task of determining real invasions from fakes, quickly enough to respond appropriately?

@CalBear ?
 

CalBear

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Knew that, just thought the US would have an easier time, kinda like how the Allies played Germany, or no worse than the previous islands (which were bad, but doable). This sounds like like the Red Army's preparations for Kursk. The US might have low-balled the number of Purple Heart's needed.
The Red Army prepared to fight a convention battle at Kursk.

The Japanese were preparing for the Alamo writ on a Nation-State scale. Here is the synopsis of the plan for the "frogmen"

As the invasion fleet reached the landing areas, the second phase would commence. The 19 surviving Japanese destroyers would attempt to attack the American transports at the invasion beaches. Suicide attack boats, called "Shinyo," carrying 550 pounds of explosives in their bows, would strike from hiding places along the shore. The Shinyo were aiming for any craft carrying troops. The Japanese Navy and Army had an estimated combined total of 3,300 special suicide attack boats. Finally, there would be rows of suicide frogmen called "Fukuryu" in their diving gear 30 feet or so beneath the water. The outermost row of Fukuryu would release anchored mines or carry mines to craft that passed nearby. Closer to shore, there would be three rows of divers, arrayed so that they were about 60 feet apart. Underwater lairs for the Fukuryu were to be made of reinforced concrete with steel doors. As many as 18 divers could be stationed in each underwater "foxhole".(26) Clad in a diving suit and breathing from oxygen tanks, a Fukuryu carried an explosive charge, which was mounted on a stick with a contact fuse. He was to swim up to landing craft and detonate the charge. The Navy had hoped for 4,000 men to be trained and equipped for this suicide force by October.
emphasis mine

Some of the planning by the Allies is stunning in its estimates.

It is highly probable that the Japanese suicide attack hit ratio would have been higher, probably closer to 1 in 6 or 1 in 7. At these ratios, 1,400 to 1,600 kamikaze aircraft would have hit American ships. With their targets being transports, the casualty rate per hit would have been higher than at Okinawa where destroyers were the primary target. In addition to the kamikaze aircraft, the U.S. fleet also would have had to deal with all of the Japanese Navy's special attack boats and midget submarines. Even if the suicide attacks were only marginally successful, the U.S. attack ratio would have eroded still farther. If the Japanese did succeed in delivering 1,500 hits against the transports, the mythical "Divine Wind" may well have blown again, turning away another invasion fleet.
emphasis mine

Based on the terrain and the Japanese defensive preparations and strategy, the battle for Kyushu would have resembled the battles of the central Pacific instead of the campaigns in the Philippines. With the casualty ratios of those battles applied to Operation Olympic, the estimate for U.S. casualties would have been 94,000 killed and 234,000 wounded.(8) The total casualty estimate of 328,000 equates to 57 percent of the U.S. ground forces slated for Olympic. On the Satsuma Peninsula, the V Amphibious Corps casualty estimate would have been 13,000 killed and 34,000 wounded, or approximately 54 percent of the Marine force. This casualty estimate for VAC is made without any additional Japanese forces moving into the 40th Army's zone. Add to these estimates the results of kamikaze attacks against transports, and the battle for Kyushu would have been devastating to the American people.
emphasis mine

These quotes are from the USMC V Amphibious Corps Intelligence summary.
 

CalBear

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Wait a second...

The Japanese believed that the only chance they had to defeat an invasion was to strike at the troop carriers before they landed. But they didn't respond to bombardments that were supposed to look like the first stage of such an invasion. Was their intelligence still up to the task of determining real invasions from fakes, quickly enough to respond appropriately?

@CalBear ?
The Japanese were not entirely blind. They had some recon aircraft and still had 38 fleet subs. The subs were being used for scouting, including off the obvious assembly points on Okinawa and in the Philippines. It is impossible to hide a force the size needed for Olympic. The Japanese knew that the transports had not sailed.
 
IIRC they finally ran out a couple years back. Still have plenty of Silver Star, DSC, Navy Cross etc. on tap.

I thought they still had at least a couple thousand. I know at least they had something like a little over a fifth of that stockpile in 2003 before the Iraq War. Apparently they DID do a new run relatively recently, of 9,000 or so, but for the simple reason that they had transferred so many to the armed forces for immediate award they had to restock their own stockpile.
 

CalBear

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That would have been down right ugly for the US forces. Mind you grenades in the water would certainly incapacitate the swimmers
Once you realize they are there and it isn't just an issue of moored mines with command detonation. By then the attacks would have occurred. IMO the swimmers would have been lucky to get 250 landing craft (out of 4,000 swimmers), as much due to "shorts" by the gun line and bombs that hit the water instead of beach defenses, as due to any flaw in the concept (which DOES have plenty of flaws). Still 250 landing craft is a massive blow, even if only 25% sink that is 1,200-4,000 KIA, depending on type of craft, before the first wave even get to the beach, plus those who are KIA/WIA in the craft that do not sink but are damaged. Figure the equivalent of an Airborne division KIA/WIA before the force even hits the beach.

As a comparison the losses at Omaha Beach were 2,000 KIA/1,000 WIA. JUST the swimmers would have, with a ~5% success rate, inflicted at least double, possibly 2.5x the total losses at Omaha Beach, all before the first American boot hit Japanese soil.
 
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