WW2 WI: Do the Japanese have enough Oil?

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In a scenario where (due to better preparations and commanders) the Allies hold Sumatra, Singapore, and Malaya in 1942, and fighting is kept to southern Burma, would the Japanese be able to get enough oil out of Borneo and other parts of the Dutch East Indies which they conquered in 1942 in the original timeline to keep things going?
 
Technically yes. Their problem then is getting it to the users. Depending on how one counts Japan had between 40 & 60 ocean going oil tankers. It needed a lot more, modern ones, perhaps as many as 100 to get by. In the scenario described it is is possible the Allies will be sinking Japanese oil tankers sooner & in larger numbers. a look at the map is in order. It may be the Allis can deploy heavy bombers vs the oil ports & refineries sooner & in larger numbers.
 
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Sir Chaos

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In a scenario where (due to better preparations and commanders) the Allies hold Sumatra, Singapore, and Malaya in 1942, and fighting is kept to southern Burma, would the Japanese be able to get enough oil out of Borneo and other parts of the Dutch East Indies which they conquered in 1942 in the original timeline to keep things going?

I strongly doubt it. As far as I can tell, they barely got enough oil out of the Dutch East Indies in OTL. Without Sumatra and Java? Forget it.
 
Japanese Situation

I strongly doubt it. As far as I can tell, they barely got enough oil out of the Dutch East Indies in OTL. Without Sumatra and Java? Forget it.
They have Java. With the exception of Sumatra (and of Singapore if that isn't counted as an extension of the Malay peninsular), they have all their original timeline conquests in the Dutch East Indies.
 
Ya.

The idiocy of the Japanese war effort is illustrated by the fact that they didn't have enough tankers to carry the oil, even if they COULD buy it. Before the war, something like half of their oil was carried in Allied tankers - and guess what, those went away when Japan declared war on them!

If the Japanese had actually had a strategy, instead of stumbling from one crisis to the next, they'd have doubled (or more) their oil tanker fleet before the war. Heck, if they did it right, they could have sold a bunch to the Brits from 1939-1941.


The other problem with Borneo was that the Dutch destroyed the refinery there. They tried to destroy the wells, but that's much harder. The Japanese had (probably) all the oil they needed - but couldn't hardly use it because it would have had to be shipped to Japan, refined, and shipped back for use in theatre. Not a very efficient way of operating. Even IF they'd had enough tankers, which they didn't.

As I understand it, some of the Japanese ships ended up burning raw crude oil, totally unrefined, for lack of anything better. (!!!)
 

Sycamore

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Ya.

The idiocy of the Japanese war effort is illustrated by the fact that they didn't have enough tankers to carry the oil, even if they COULD buy it. Before the war, something like half of their oil was carried in Allied tankers - and guess what, those went away when Japan declared war on them!

If the Japanese had actually had a strategy, instead of stumbling from one crisis to the next, they'd have doubled (or more) their oil tanker fleet before the war. Heck, if they did it right, they could have sold a bunch to the Brits from 1939-1941.


The other problem with Borneo was that the Dutch destroyed the refinery there. They tried to destroy the wells, but that's much harder. The Japanese had (probably) all the oil they needed - but couldn't hardly use it because it would have had to be shipped to Japan, refined, and shipped back for use in theatre. Not a very efficient way of operating. Even IF they'd had enough tankers, which they didn't.

As I understand it, some of the Japanese ships ended up burning raw crude oil, totally unrefined, for lack of anything better. (!!!)

That's interesting. So, WI the Japanese had actually made an effort to increase the size of their fleet of oil tankers prior to the (2nd Sino-Japanese) war? How much more capable could the Japanese have been ITTL?
 
That's interesting. So, WI the Japanese had actually made an effort to increase the size of their fleet of oil tankers prior to the (2nd Sino-Japanese) war? How much more capable could the Japanese have been ITTL?

Yes they could subject to finding the steel, but they didn't look after the tankers they had because they didn't introduce a convoy system until the end of 1943. An earlier convoy system giving priority to protecting the oil supply means more oil gets back to Japan in 1942 and 1943.

They did have access to coal in Korea and Manchuria and they set up their own synthetic oil industry. They had the time to expand that further, but once again they need the steel to build the plant with.
 
Even with Oil, they had the problem of needing to take crude to Japan, refine it, and ship it back.

As tankers were short(even before the Allies were shooting at them), they used local crude oil in ships rather than refined Bunker C

This did damage control parties no favors, as Crude is far more dangerous, having all those short chain hydrocarbons, like butane to gasoline with it.

Not to mention the extra wear on the burners, as that Crude has impurities and more BTU content than Bunker C
 
Even with Oil, they had the problem of needing to take crude to Japan, refine it, and ship it back.

As tankers were short(even before the Allies were shooting at them), they used local crude oil in ships rather than refined Bunker C

This did damage control parties no favours, as Crude is far more dangerous, having all those short chain hydrocarbons, like butane to gasoline with it.

Not to mention the extra wear on the burners, as that Crude has impurities and more BTU content than Bunker C

Refining capacity back in Japan and for that matter storage capacity is not a problem. The British official history on the war of Japan has an appendix on the Japanese Economy and according to that the Japanese had plenty of both.

The Japanese started to build coal burning merchant ships towards the end of the war. With some more foresight they could have done that sooner as they had access to plenty of coal in Korea and Manchuria.

If they had set up a convoy system 2 years earlier it would have been harder for the submarines to shoot at them.

Could they have built their merchant ships as dual burners? I.e. coal or oil. My POD would be when the oil embargo was introduced. That would mean more of the fuel they did have could go to the Navy and Air Forces.
 
According to the British official history on Merchant Shipping and the Demands of War Japan had 1,054 ships of over 1,600 GRT in 1939 with a combined displacement of 5.0 million GRT. Of these 47 ships totalling 430,000 GRT were tankers.

The British history of the War Against Japan says that the Japanese built 1.7 million GRT of merchant ships if the 5-year period 1937-41. By 1940 Japan had 6 million tons of merchant ships including 700 ocean-going freighters, 132 passenger-cargo vessels and 49 ocean-going tankers, but not their displacements.

The same source says that the Japanese lost 259 tankers of 1.25 million GRT during the course of the war. However, it also says that 25 of 179,000 tons or the equivalent of half the tanker fleet in 1939-40 was sunk by the end of 1943 when there were no convoys. I think if the 25 tankers had been convoyed then most of them would still have been afloat.

I know this is a crude calculation, but bear with me. Japan produced a combined total of 500,000 tons of merchant and naval shipping in 1937, but for the next 4 years it fluctuated between 375,000 and 475,000 tons. If they had maintained it at half a million tons they could have built an extra 286,000 tons of tankers and increase the carrying capacity of the tanker fleet by 50% at the end of 1941. All they have to do is scrape together about 300,000 tons of steel over 4 years.
 

tenthring

Banned
Like Germany, Japanese decision making was emotional and idealogical. While its true there were real resource constraints on both countries Autarky that provided impetus to conflict these were definitely of secondary importance. In Japan the situation was perhaps even worse then Germany. Germany only had to deal with the radical decision of one man however crazy, who could theoretically have made different decisions. Japan was getting into a war every time a hyped up mid level officer just decided to have at it. Not a recipe for advance planning.
 
Like Germany, Japanese decision making was emotional and idealogical. While its true there were real resource constraints on both countries Autarky that provided impetus to conflict these were definitely of secondary importance. In Japan the situation was perhaps even worse then Germany. Germany only had to deal with the radical decision of one man however crazy, who could theoretically have made different decisions. Japan was getting into a war every time a hyped up mid level officer just decided to have at it. Not a recipe for advance planning.

There was more advanced planning than you might think. Part of the problem was that the planning was done by the civilian departments of the Japanese Government.

The appendix I am referring to says that the Ministry of Communications did do the forward planning, but lacked the prestige to put its plans into practice. When the Imperial Japanese Navy became interested in expanding merchant ship production output increased spectacularly. That is:

Year - Tonnage Built
1937 - 442,382
1938 - 410,644
1939 - 343,526
1940 - 279,816
1941 - 237,617
1942 - 272,963
1943 - 769,085
1944 - 1,699,203

It could have been even more in 1944 had it not been for a shortage of steel, which was due to a shortage of high-grade ore, which was due to the freighters being sunk; because there was no convoy system until the end of 1943. If the improvements of 1943 and 1944 had been bumped forward by one year that would give them an extra 1.5 million tons.
 
Refining capacity back in Japan and for that matter storage capacity is not a problem. The British official history on the war of Japan has an appendix on the Japanese Economy and according to that the Japanese had plenty of both.

The problem is that trips to japan and back gives the USN more chances for a strike.

If it wasn't a problem, the why did the IJN burn Crude in place of refined Bunker C?
 
The problem is that trips to japan and back gives the USN more chances for a strike.

I don't get your point. The Japanese forces in the "Southern Area" were running on oil refined in captured Dutch refineries.

The source I'm quoting also says that the Japanese had allowed for the Dutch blowing up the oil wells and refineries and had repair parties ready to send in as soon as they were captured.

Even if the tankers didn't have to take refined oil back to the Southern Area they still had to take the unrefined oil back to Japan. This was needed for the Japanese Fleet, to train new pilots for the Air Forces and Japanese Industry. So the only difference in the tankers sailing to the East Indies with full tanks instead of empty ones is that they are more likely to sink if hit.

Furthermore the Americans were attacking the tankers anyway. The American submarines were ordered to make them the priority target. And the Japanese shot themselves in the foot by not bothering to protect them until the end of 1943.

If it wasn't a problem, the why did the IJN burn Crude in place of refined Bunker C?

I don't know and will not speculate.
 
Please Close

Please close this thread. It's been quiet for more than six months, and I'm not sure that I'll be around in coming weeks to participate if the discussion resumes.
 
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