It's time once again for our regular open thread. Talk about whatever you want, so long as it isn't Culture War.
Apologies for missing the last OT slot. I've been busy and just didn't get around to doing overhauls in time.
Overhauls are A Brief History of the Aircraft Carrier, Harpoon, The 6th Battle Squadron Part 2, Phalanx and for 2023, my review of Frontiers of Flight, Inc's Introduction to Artillery, Excitement in the Bab el Mandeb (sadly still relevant today) and The Problem with Air Museums.
Comments
Here's a thought (motivated by my recent reading of Shattered Sword). What should Japan have done instead of Midway? Like, if we are doing alternative history and you are dictator of Japan.
The obvious answer is `don't get into war with the US in the first place.' Don't do Pearl Harbor, avoid the Philippines, and focus on attacking the British and Dutch, and trust that FDR won't be able to twist Congress's arm into declaring a war against a Japan that hasn't shot a single bullet in anger against Americans. Maybe try and use your regional naval superiority to conquer the middle east (and the oil you desperately need). With Britain tied down by Germany in the European theater, you might just be able to consolidate an Asian empire, as long as the US doesn't enter the war as an active belligerent.
OK, now suppose that the time machine that beams you back can only go as far as January 1, 1942. Now what?
I think at this point your goose is basically cooked - imperial Japan could never have prevailed against the US. But what's the least bad plan from here on? Seems to me that probably you follow the historical plan through the conquest of Singapore and Indonesia, but then what? It's not clear that there are any good options. You can switch to the strategic defensive, but this only delays the inevitable. Is there any kind of hail mary plan that can lead to victory? I don't see it, unless maybe you try and invade Hawaii, succeed, and hand it back in exchange for peace.
Alternatively, there is the galaxy brain perspective that `don't change a thing,' because losing the war and becoming an American protectorate worked out pretty well for Japan in the long run.
@Humphrey Appleby
It's a long shot, but: go on the defensive in China and Oceania and send most of your spare forces toward South and Southeast Asia. Put all your weight behind Indian and Burmese independence and try to cut off British access by sea. If an independence war gains traction, you've cut off supplies to the Chinese Communists (giving you a shot at winning in that theater) and deprived Britain of useful resources (hopefully prolonging the war in Europe). Build up your air force and make the Americans come to you before they've developed confidence and expertise in carrier operations; if you catch them within range of your airfields and get lucky with the engagement, you can sink enough ships to make their amphibious operations extremely risky. That buys you until after D-Day to consolidate your land gains and force Chiang Kai-Shek to surrender, after which you can set up a Chinese puppet state that will fight the Communists and British for you and give your land forces a much needed break.
Meanwhile you're negotiating hard with Stalin to establish a secret non-aggression pact and partition Manchuria. (If Hitler can do it, so can you!) The US is still bogged down in the South Pacific and New Guinea when Germany falls, at which point it quickly becomes clear that the Soviet Union and the West are going to be long-term adversaries. Leaving the A-bomb aside, because holy cow is alternate history a can of worms there, it seems reasonable to posit that the Western powers won't have the stomach for a further prolonged war against all of Asia. Eventually we end up in a Cold War But Japanese with a frozen conflict in the East Indies and no hope for Korea, Vietnam, etc. At which point you'll still sorely need to modernize to win the long term geopolitical scenario, but that's not my problem anymore.
@Humphrey Appleby In my opinion, the best way involves following through on the conquest of Malaya, Burma, and then the Indies, but after that to not try and go for Port Moresby or the Solomons. The main thrust should be against China, but it shouldn't be like Ichigo because we aren't worried about American bomber bases here. I would start with Ko-go to get an easy victory against the despised and starving KMT garrison of Henan which would reduce Chinese morale (and reopen the Jinghan railway) and then launch a two-pronged offensive at Chongqing, the first going north through Xi'an and Hanzhong and the second going south through the Yangtze valley. Towards the beginning of this the Doolittle Raid would happen and cause great political pressure for an offensive in Zhejiang, which I will try to avoid, but if I must divert troops for it I will avoid using biowarfare because it was mostly ineffective and sometimes ended up disabling Japanese forces. The troops and materiel for this will come in part from cancellation of operations in the SW Pacific, but also from the Kwantung Army which had been reinforced in 1941 following Barbarossa and was still maintained at an unnecessarily large size for years after. After all, the USSR is fighting for its life right now and Japan has a non-aggression pact with them. After Chongqing and Xi'an are fallen, Chiang Kai-Shek has lost almost everything he controls directly and may be amenable to negotiations (provided I can keep the terms at 'Wang-Chiang merger' and not be pressured by victory-diseased officers into going back to the First Konoe Statement). If I can end the war in China, it severely weakens the American victory strategy which gives China far more importance than it actually has, so if I can avoid losing a great fleet battle then America might negotiate. @hnau The Chinese Communists weren't really supplying from India, is the problem. Their supplies mostly either came from their Chinese/Japanese enemies or local manufacturing within the Base Areas. Also, as I've mentioned, Japan already had an NAP with Stalin post-1941.
Both the
China first' and theBurma/India first' strategies are army centric strategies though. It's not easy to see how (temporary) naval superiority can be leveraged for either. And we might be asking the Army to do more than it's capable of. It was already incapable of conclusively winning the China war, now you want it to subdue and control a second massive theater?Like, maybe it's true that starting in 1942 the marginal yen should be sunk into the Army rather than the Navy, but given the blog we are on, what should the Navy be doing in that time? This (to me) is the appeal of `go for the middle east' - that's something that naval power could plausibly enable (turn the Indian ocean into a Japanese lake, then grab the middle east, which also has the advantage of simultaneously securing crucial oil supplies for yourself and denying them to the British and Dutch (who are also your enemies).
Doesn't help you much with the Americans though. And there you have no path to victory, your best case outcome is a negotiated peace. But how do you get a negotiated peace after Pearl Harbor? A halfway plausible answer might be to have a change of government in Tokyo, and then ask for a negotiated peace, handing over some scapegoats (on whose head you will heap the entire blame for pearl harbor) as a gesture of good faith.
Alternatively, it seems to me that Hawaii is the only possible
naval centric conquest' in the Pacific which would actually significantly increase Japanesestrategic depth.' Midway, the Solomons etc just seem like irrelevant sideshows on which to throw away your limited naval power. And if you were able to conquer Hawaii, you might actually have a shot at a negotiated peace (offering the return of Hawaii, possibly along with some scapegoats, in return for a cessation of hostilities).(A) don't go to the decisive battle with only 2/3s of your carriers. If the japanese had showed up with 5 or 6 carriers instead of 4, the battle goes much better for them, especially since shokaku and zuikaku could take hits without bursting into flames.
(B) don't fight so close to the biggest US base and so far from your own. yorktown couldn't have made it to the fight if it hadn't been so close to pearl. Espiritu santo would have been a better target, especially if you can bring in air support from the Solomons.
None of this really changes the outcome of the war, there's an essex horde coming online in late 43 that the japanese can't hope to match, but either of those decisions makes the early war a lot less fun for the US.
@Cassander in what sense was Midway `decisive'? The end result was massively overdetermined, so? All this strategy does is to buy a few extra months of local air superiority. Having it is better than not having it, to be sure, but what are you going to do with that temporary local air/naval superiority.
Like, maybe an IJN following the Cassander strategy secures tactical victory in the next battle after Coral sea, but this tactical victory is going to have roughly the same strategic import as the Zulu tactical victory at Islandlwana, no?
@Humphrey Appleby The IJA was entirely capable of conducting the offensives laid out. The reason the war in China was in a stalemate from 1938 (Capture of Wuhan) to 1944 (Ichi-go) was because the Japanese diverted most of the army elsewhere (first to Manzhouguo for conflicts with Russia, then to the Pacific) and gave a single corps-size formation (the 11th Army) the sole responsibility for nearly all of the following offensive operations until 1944. For this reason they adopted a strategy of attacking Chinese troop concentrations to try and inflict maximum casualties and then leaving. Given the inability of the NRA to halt these Japanese offensives at any defensive lines, it's simple to assert that with a much larger offensive force which could be taken from Manzhouguo, an offensive taking large amounts of territory could be pressed successfully.
Additionally, the Japanese have an advantage beginning after Pearl Harbor in that by starting a war they were able to take Hong Kong and the Shanghai International Settlement. This destroyed the financial operations which were keeping the Chinese state and the Fabi currency afloat. The result was an unstoppable economic crisis and hyperinflation in Free China, which hurt the morale of the soldiers and, as the NRA's always-dubious logistical corps turned to smuggling, even their physical condition.
I think the Indian operation is unfeasible because of the massive amount of shipping it would take to sustain Japanese forces there, in range of British submarines. Even Burma was hard to resupply until the Thai-Burmese railway was finished. Also, I don't think that the Indians who would rise up would be a very capable force. Sepoys were generally loyal to the Raj unless they were captured, and the INA was pretty bad despite having Japanese arms and some training, which Indian rebels would not have (leaving aside logistics, Japan generally struggled to arm their friends). Also, it's dubious that mainstream Congress leaders or the ever-popular Gandhi would sanction a rising alongside a Japanese invasion, let alone the more pro-British leaders like the Princes, the Muslim League, or the Communist Party. So by 1943, you'd be saying to Hirohito, "I did not realize the Indian hinterland was so vast". A Middle East conquest would not be in question without India. Also, we don't need the Middle East's oil. There was plenty of it in the East Indies, the problem was that Japan couldn't spare enough shipping to transport it where it was needed.
As for Hawaii, that's also realistically impossible. The distances were vast, and you'd need to take some islands on the way (like Midway) to supply the expedition. Plus, after Pearl Harbor Hawaii became very well-garrisoned.
I agree that it's hard to get peace with America, but a change in government would certainly not do anything. Japan changed cabinets twice in the war and it didn't lead to any softening of Washington's attitude.
@Humphrey Appleby "in what sense was Midway `decisive’? The end result was massively overdetermined, so? All this strategy does is to buy a few extra months of local air superiority. Having it is better than not having it, to be sure, but what are you going to do with that temporary local air/naval superiority."
I'm not cassander, but I can take a stab at this. Midway wasn't decisive, true, but Yamamoto really, really wanted it to be. That being the case, he should have vetoed committing major Combined Fleet assets to secondary operations in New Guinea and Alaska until after Operation MI was successfully concluded. We know he at least potentially had the leverage to do this - that's how he got the Pearl Harbor attack approved in the first place - he just didn't think it was worth the fight this time.
@5shi Did any of those cabinets offer to hand the previous cabinet over in chains, while swearing that the previous guys were the only ones that had anything to do with Pearl Harbor? Because that’s a load bearing part of the Appleby plan.