StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Inspired by a comment in the Fantasy thread:

However, they still have the issue of bringing the U.S. to heel in six months. If the carriers aren't destroyed without equal or greater cost to the Japanese by that time, then the muscle of American logistics will overpower them in manpower and materiel.

Let's say Enterprise, Lexington and Saratoga were all in Pearl at the time of the attack and were all destroyed by magazine hits (so they're not coming back into service). Yorktown, Hornet, Wasp and Ranger are all sent to the Pacific to replace them. I assume that with only four carriers left, the idea of sending half that force within a few hundred miles of Japan to launch the Doolittle Raid is shot down very quickly. Yamamoto, for whatever reason, decides to support the Port Moresby operation with the full Kido Butai (assume Kaga didn't suffer her grounding damage and is available). Nimitz responds with his entire carrier force, and said entire force is wiped out. Alternately, Yamamoto just sends Zuikaku and Shōkaku , which are met by two US carriers (say, Yorktown and Wasp), sink them, and the remaining two are sunk at Midway. Either way, the invasion is successful, and the Japanese achieve complete control of New Guinea.

Nimitz and MacArthur are presumably fired, the former for losing his fleet, the latter for losing yet another island. The Japanese will have free reign in the Pacific for at least the next nine months, probably closer to a year - it will take that long for Essex and Independence to be completed and worked up. Even after that, it won't be until the last quarter of 1943 that the US carrier force will have recovered to parity with the Japanese, and they won't have the long experience of combat and victory they acquired during 1942 historically.

Geographically, the Japanese will have control of New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. Their next objectives will be New Caledonia, the New Hebrides and Fiji to cut the allied supply lines to Australia. The two key questions relevant to this are 1) do they have the manpower and sealift resources to accomplish this and 2) are there sufficient allied forces in the islands to resist them? The answer to 1) is "probably", as my understanding is that proper planning for these operations was being done, rather than quickly shot down suggestions like invading Australia. I don't have the information to answer 2).

Assuming the Japanese are able to complete these operations, what happens next? The first allied priority will presumably be clearing the approaches to Australia, up to the southern Solomon Islands both to deny them to the Japanese and so reopen the supply lines, and to allow them to be used as bases to advance into the central Pacific. Given the relative carrier force strengths, I can't see this happening until late 1943/early 1944, as it will almost certainly involve a major clash between the US and Japanese carrier fleets, and I can't see the US risking triggering such an action until sufficient forces are available to make victory a near certainty.

Beyond this, which will probably last into late 1944 given how difficult the historic Solomons campaign was, the historic advance through the Gilbert, Marshall and Mariana Islands will probably proceed as it did historically, since the Japanese losses of Coral Sea/Midway/Santa Cruz will likely have been replicated by actions in the Coral Sea during the New Caledonia/New Hebrides/Fiji campaign(s). I expect New Guinea to be bypassed, possibly the northern Solomons too unless a closer encirclement or invasion is deemed necessary to isolate Rabaul. I expect these operations will have been completed by August 1945 - by which time Trinity will have occurred.

In terms of the continued advance, the Philippines will probably be bypassed given the lack of Douglas MacArthur, and the capture of Iwo Jima and Okinawa completed by early 1946. There's a big question mark over when the bombs will start dropping. The Marianas won't be ready until November 1945, by which time the US will have something like a dozen waiting to be deployed. Will they start the B-29 campaign with a massive nuclear attack? Single strikes as historical? A conventional offensive to cripple Japanese air defences and await the fall of Iwo Jima and Okinawa as emergency landing sites?

Thoughts anyone?

Couple of thoughts:

With regard to nukes/bombing we might see the B-36, with its huge range, made a higher priority.

What carriers do the Brits have available? OTL they sent a carrier to the Pacific when there was a lack of American carriers. Do all of the British carriers get sent to the Pacific? Or might the American's try to go for the 'Decisive Battle' that the Japanese want with their battleline? If the British carriers get sent to the Pacific there should be enough Allied battleships to bottleup the Italian and German navies.

atg wrote:With regard to nukes/bombing we might see the B-36, with its huge range, made a higher priority.

True. Alternately even more time, money and fuel might be wasted trying to turn China into an effective base.

What carriers do the Brits have available? OTL they sent a carrier to the Pacific when there was a lack of American carriers. Do all of the British carriers get sent to the Pacific?

I can't see it happening. While Victorious did do a stint supporting the invasion of New Georgia, that was only for a few months, not a full transfer to the Pacific theatre, and I expect it would be offset here by the absence of Ranger from the Home Fleet, and by whatever butterflies get stirred up by the absence of Wasp's Malta runs in early 1942. The Royal Navy's carriers were needed to support the Mediterranean Fleet until mid 1943, and to help bottle up the various German heavy units in Norway until late 1944. Once they're dealt with the BPF would be available as historically, but by that point the US Pacific Fleet would have over a dozen Essex class carriers in service. During the critical period of 1942 and 1943 there were always too many jobs to do and not enough ships to do them. Indeed, the Royal Navy's carriers might have too much on their plate simply trying to survive, as I would expect the next job on the Japanese list after their push south east from the Solomons would be to go back into the Indian Ocean to finish off the Eastern Fleet. I can't see Formidable and Indomitable pulling off a Midway against the full Kido Butai.

Captain Seafort wrote:Yamamoto, for whatever reason, decides to support the Port Moresby operation with the full Kido Butai (assume Kaga didn't suffer her grounding damage and is available). Nimitz responds with his entire carrier force, and said entire force is wiped out. Alternately, Yamamoto just sends Zuikaku and Shōkaku , which are met by two US carriers (say, Yorktown and Wasp), sink them, and the remaining two are sunk at Midway. Either way, the invasion is successful, and the Japanese achieve complete control of New Guinea.

Just to be clear you're positing that the US loses two carriers at Coral Sea without inflicting loss on the IJN?

At this point, I'm not sure the US would sortie in the same manner in response to the Japanese threat against Midway. When the enemy's numerical superiority is great enough, at some point you really are forced back on fleet-in-being tactics. So I doubt whoever is in the role of CINCPAC would dispatch his last carriers in response to what his intelligence organs tell him is a full sortie by the Japanese fleet, hoping to catch them when he's outnumbered three or four to one in carriers.

Nimitz and MacArthur are presumably fired, the former for losing his fleet, the latter for losing yet another island.

Why would MacArthur get sacked for what he can easily spin as a Navy failure? I don't recall him being in any trouble for losing in the Philippines, after all- once the Japanese had a firm naval grip on the island, it was going to fall inevitably and no amount of good generalship from the land forces would fix that.

Captain Seafort wrote:

atg wrote:With regard to nukes/bombing we might see the B-36, with its huge range, made a higher priority.

True. Alternately even more time, money and fuel might be wasted trying to turn China into an effective base.

Under these conditions, supporting China is literally the only way to exert any strategic pull on Japan to stop them from expanding into what is in effect a complete vacuum in the Pacific.

atg wrote:What carriers do the Brits have available? OTL they sent a carrier to the Pacific when there was a lack of American carriers. Do all of the British carriers get sent to the Pacific?

I agree with Seafort's conclusion on this.

The British can't spare significant fleet strength in 1942; that's why they sent such paltry forces to Singapore in 1941. They needed pretty much all the ships they had for operations in the Mediterranean and to keep the convoy routes open in the face of German capital ship raiders.

With the Japanese completely on the rampage, naval operations in the Mediterranean might receive a lower priority... but very shortly after Pearl Harbor an Italian commando raid succeeded in crippling two RN battleships at Alexandria, and they'd had a number of other naval reverses and accidents in those months as well. The British won't be able to spare significant forces. If they could have done so they would have done so after Pearl Harbor.

I mean, it's not like the western Allies weren't frantically mobilizing all available naval resources to stabilize the ongoing disaster in the Pacific as it was. Making the disaster more complete would not significantly increase what could be spared from the war on Germany.

Simon_Jester wrote:Just to be clear you're positing that the US loses two carriers at Coral Sea without inflicting loss on the IJN?

Not necessarily without loss, but not much more than they suffered historically. That nearly happened originally.

At this point, I'm not sure the US would sortie in the same manner in response to the Japanese threat against Midway. When the enemy's numerical superiority is great enough, at some point you really are forced back on fleet-in-being tactics. So I doubt whoever is in the role of CINCPAC would dispatch his last carriers in response to what his intelligence organs tell him is a full sortie by the Japanese fleet, hoping to catch them when he's outnumbered three or four to one in carriers.

True. The first scenario (the entire US carrier force being destroyed by the full Kido Butai in the Coral Sea) might therefore be more realistic. The basic premise I'm trying to establish is one of "the allies have been pushed off New Guinea, the entire US carrier force is gone, what happens next?"

Why would MacArthur get sacked for what he can easily spin as a Navy failure? I don't recall him being in any trouble for losing in the Philippines, after all- once the Japanese had a firm naval grip on the island, it was going to fall inevitably and no amount of good generalship from the land forces would fix that.

My understanding was that MacArthur only survived the Philippines débâcle because he was a lot better politician than he was a general, and that isn't going to save him if the same thing happens again. The US armed forces of WW2 were not very forgiving of bad luck.

Under these conditions, supporting China is literally the only way to exert any strategic pull on Japan to stop them from expanding into what is in effect a complete vacuum in the Pacific.

All supporting China is going to do is put more money into Chiang Kai-shek's pockets, with a commensurate negative effective on Stilwell's blood pressure. It can't be effectively supplied over the hump, so the only way to bring significant forces to bear in the theatre is to clear Burma, retake Rangoon and reopen the Burma Road. Eastern Army was in no shape to do this until early-mid 1944. The lack of a Solomons campaign might free up landing craft to launch Op Dracula in late 42 or early 43, and push up the Irrawaddy rather than down it, but you're back to the problem of how to stop the Kido Butai interfering.

Captain Seafort wrote:True. The first scenario (the entire US carrier force being destroyed by the full Kido Butai in the Coral Sea) might therefore be more realistic. The basic premise I'm trying to establish is one of "the allies have been pushed off New Guinea, the entire US carrier force is gone, what happens next?"

I'm not sure the US would have knowingly committed the entire carrier force to anything less than a truly critical operation, though, especially if they'd already taken severe losses in carriers and had effectively NO capital ships to replace losses with. Coral Sea was important but not critical; Midway was rather more important.

Why would MacArthur get sacked for what he can easily spin as a Navy failure? I don't recall him being in any trouble for losing in the Philippines, after all- once the Japanese had a firm naval grip on the island, it was going to fall inevitably and no amount of good generalship from the land forces would fix that.

My understanding was that MacArthur only survived the Philippines débâcle because he was a lot better politician than he was a general, and that isn't going to save him if the same thing happens again. The US armed forces of WW2 were not very forgiving of bad luck.

That's a point. I'd like to hear more people's opinions on this.

Under these conditions, supporting China is literally the only way to exert any strategic pull on Japan to stop them from expanding into what is in effect a complete vacuum in the Pacific.

All supporting China is going to do is put more money into Chiang Kai-shek's pockets, with a commensurate negative effective on Stilwell's blood pressure. It can't be effectively supplied over the hump, so the only way to bring significant forces to bear in the theatre is to clear Burma, retake Rangoon and reopen the Burma Road. Eastern Army was in no shape to do this until early-mid 1944. The lack of a Solomons campaign might free up landing craft to launch Op Dracula in late 42 or early 43, and push up the Irrawaddy rather than down it, but you're back to the problem of how to stop the Kido Butai interfering.

Well, they'll at least have the historical B-29 bases; if they can physically range on Japan when the atomic bomb comes out, we may see air-atomic bombing of Japan from China regardless of whether the Pacific War has advanced to recapture the Marianas.

If it comes down to it, the US sends all their CVE's to the Pacific, they activate the XCV program, the Atlantic can wait, the US actually puts 30% of effort into the Pacific rather than the 15% OTL. Japan learns winning can sometimes be a defeat.

Also, Japan's invasion of Midway ends hilariously as the entire landing force is slaughtered trying to wade in over the reef and through the lagoon, but that particular AH image has always bemused me.

(This should possibly be in History, I'm not sure.)

It has become customary to do alternate history in Off-Topic, due to the difficulty of maintaining, in a counterfactual, the high level of precise correctness that is often expected of the History forum.

Also, what is the XCV program? I cannot readily find clear information on it.

Once Japan declared war they had no chance of winning, even if they had wiped out the USA's entire initial fleet of carriers. America was far too great an industrial power for Japan to overcome. And assuming things play out more or less the same in Europe, Russia would also be in the war by 1945. At best, Japan would have only delayed the inevitable.

And don't forget that surface operations were only a part of the Pacific War. By 1945 the Allies had practically destroyed Japan's merchant fleet, the majority of the losses being inflicted by submarines. Like the UK Japan was highly dependent on its shipping for survival, but unlike the UK it did not have another industrial ally to back it up. If worse came to worse the Aliies could have produced even more subs than they did and starve Japan into submission.

Simon_Jester wrote:I agree with Seafort's conclusion on this.

The British can't spare significant fleet strength in 1942; that's why they sent such paltry forces to Singapore in 1941. They needed pretty much all the ships they had for operations in the Mediterranean and to keep the convoy routes open in the face of German capital ship raiders.

I'm not so sure on that, but of course we have the benefit of hindsight. The original plan was to send four 'Rs' east, which Churchill changed to the OTL PoW/Repulse because he thought they'd be more surivable (oops). One of the carriers was also supposed to be there but ran aground in the Caribbean IIRC.

Based on some quick numbers the Brits have 12 battleships/battlecruisers (4x King George V, 2x Rodney, 2x Queen Elizabeth, 3x Revenge, and Renown) to face off against 9 Axis battleships (Tirpitz, Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Andrea Doria, Caio Duilio, Giulio Cesare, Littorio, Roma, Vittorio Veneto). So the Axis are 75% of the British capital ships alone. However the Axis have several 'second rate' battleships: the 11" gunned Sharnhorst & Gneisenau (I'd put one of these as equal to Renown), plus the 3 Italian 12.6" gunned ships. Both German and Italian navies are also hampered by fuel constraints, Italy moreso.

To this we can also add whatever battleships the American's can/will send over.

However - If I've done my checking right, the British only really have four fleet carriers by this point (I'm not including the Courageous-class), not sure on light/escort carrier numbers. Maybe enough to hold the defense, but not enough to go on the offence in the Pacific. It'd really come down to what the political players decided is needed.


Another thought - the fact that 3 carriers are taken out at Pearl Harbour means that the American battleships don't get as much of a hammering. This could lead to a few more US battleships being available. Which leads to the question of does the US Navy decide to try for a full Jutland-style battle against the Japanese?

Simon_Jester wrote:Also, what is the XCV program? I cannot readily find clear information on it.

The XCV program was a series of studies in the 1930s to convert fast ocean liners into aircraft carriers. The program died because these very ships were expected to be used as troop transports, and the predicted shortage of carriers never materialized as was envisioned in said program. Friedman writes about this in US Carriers.

Whatever the hell happens, in late 1942 and 1943 the US put enough ships into the water to wipe out the Japanese navy even if it had already lost every ship in the prewar navy, though actually assembling them all in one place to do so might take into early 1944 when Operation Forager was launched anyway. You can give Japan every ship it built in the war in late 1943 and the US could still win a fleet battle through the insane force of CVEs it had to lavishly slathered to every mission in real life. Easily win.

And since that would never happen, US sub attrition remains a huge factor, and any Japanese ability to hold postions further east only makes worse its already horrendous its logistical problems. Even if Midway could be taken its no exaggeration to say Japan could have never kept it supplied.


In real life by the end of 1943 US air power in the South Pacific alone was at the level of launching 300-400 plane raids EACH DAY against the Japanese that they were utterly unable to oppose in any effective manner. This was also while flying all kinds of other missions.

The largest Japanese conventional strike of the war, the Oahu raid and the I-Go operation each involved about 350 planes each, and were basically non repeatable events. Even when Japan still had its big fleet carriers they were just not capable of sustaining them in action for long. Japan never massed more then about 500 planes around Rabaul at any one time. The US and Australians got comically past them, and destroyed everything. Any number of additional Japanese carrier air groups could be chewed up the same way, American and Australian losses began to get rather low by the end of 1943 anyway.

Relevant charts of Japans strength at Rabaul in all that Solomans and eastern New Guinea fighting, Army and Navy air strengths.
http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/AAF/USS ... O-8-66.jpg
http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/AAF/USS ... O-8-67.jpg

"Whatever the final score of the game, Japan, the country, loses the war."

atg wrote:

Simon_Jester wrote:I agree with Seafort's conclusion on this.

The British can't spare significant fleet strength in 1942; that's why they sent such paltry forces to Singapore in 1941. They needed pretty much all the ships they had for operations in the Mediterranean and to keep the convoy routes open in the face of German capital ship raiders.

I'm not so sure on that, but of course we have the benefit of hindsight. The original plan was to send four 'Rs' east, which Churchill changed to the OTL PoW/Repulse because he thought they'd be more surivable (oops). One of the carriers was also supposed to be there but ran aground in the Caribbean IIRC.

Churchill was right, the ships of Force Z were at least as (if not more) survivable, than R-class battleships.

Put this way- Churchill's History of the Second World War may be one of the more self-serving primary sources in the history of history itself, but in it Churchill made a big point of just how far-flung the RN's responsibilities were, and I see no reason to assume he was misrepresenting the facts. Among other things, while the British had plenty of older battleships they had very few aircraft carriers and few of their battleships were modern. World War One-era battleships weren't going to do much good against a rampaging Japanese carrier fleet, after all.

Looking at the modern ships Britain had available on, say, December 1, 1941...

The light carriers Eagle and Furious were undergoing a refit and wouldn't be available for two and four months, respectively. Ark Royal had literally just been sunk and the light carrier Argus was needed to cover the hole that left in the fleet deployments.

Illustrious and Formidable were just (about to be) out of the repair shop and were ready to go... and promptly collided with each other on the way back to Britain, causing some delay in getting them finally ready to go. But they're warships, they count. Historically both were sent to the Indian Ocean but did not operate aggressively against Japan.

Indomitable, as noted, had been damaged in an accident. Victorious was preoccupied escorting Arctic convoys, a very important mission that could not be ignored even to deal with rampaging Japanese carrier fleets.

The light carrier Hermes was already in the Indian Ocean... so what it comes down to is that Britain literally only had three large and two small carriers available for any mission in the near future, and historically committed most of them to that force to the Indian Ocean anyway, at least in the short term.

Then there is the question of battleships...
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Based on some quick numbers the Brits have 12 battleships/battlecruisers (4x King George V, 2x Rodney, 2x Queen Elizabeth, 3x Revenge, and Renown) to face off against 9 Axis battleships (Tirpitz, Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Andrea Doria, Caio Duilio, Giulio Cesare, Littorio, Roma, Vittorio Veneto). So the Axis are 75% of the British capital ships alone. However the Axis have several 'second rate' battleships: the 11" gunned Sharnhorst & Gneisenau (I'd put one of these as equal to Renown), plus the 3 Italian 12.6" gunned ships. Both German and Italian navies are also hampered by fuel constraints, Italy moreso.

The problem is that Renown and the Revenge-class are totally inadequate to fight a first class enemy battleship like Tirpitz. The Queen Elizabeths are at least manageable, being a very progressive World War One design. Nelson and Rodney have modern armament but are slow due to Washington Treaty limitations. Only the King George V-class is truly modern and effective against the Axis' best capital ships.

So from the point of view of British naval strategists, they had to keep most of the King George Vs and at least one large carrier in or near home waters before allocating ships to the Indian Ocean or the Pacific... which is exactly what they did historically. They can't send significantly more ships into the Indian Ocean without creating a situation where Tirpitz can go on a rampage in the Atlantic in relative safety, or where the Italians can seriously consider launching a naval counterattack in the Mediterranean.

However - If I've done my checking right, the British only really have four fleet carriers by this point (I'm not including the Courageous-class), not sure on light/escort carrier numbers. Maybe enough to hold the defense, but not enough to go on the offence in the Pacific.

That's pretty much exactly what happened historically. The British shifted about as much carrier strength as they could spare into the Indian Ocean in early 1942, then started transferring it back out after the US won some victories because THEY needed their carriers in order to cover amphibious operations closer to home.

Another thought - the fact that 3 carriers are taken out at Pearl Harbour means that the American battleships don't get as much of a hammering. This could lead to a few more US battleships being available. Which leads to the question of does the US Navy decide to try for a full Jutland-style battle against the Japanese?

The Japanese had planned extensively for that option (the 'decisive battle'), and sending in a twenty-knot battleline dominated by the US's WWI-era Standard battleships would be very messy with the Japanese free to use carriers as well as their surface fleet against it.

Simon_Jester wrote:Churchill was right, the ships of Force Z were at least as (if not more) survivable, than R-class battleships.

The issue you're both missing is that Churchill and elements of the RN massively underestimated the capabilities of the Japanese fleet to begin with; which is why the original force of four R-class ships to Singapore was grossly inadequate and even the updated Force Z even with a carrier was little more than target practice.

The RN in fact was not capable of facing the Japanese fleet on its own in Asian waters given the situation in early 1942; especially Singapore/Malaya which was within range of Japanese land-based air. Even without the losses to the Germans the Royal Navy, as you pointed out, simply did not have very many modern battleships and had a very limited number of carriers.

Worse, British carriers and aircraft frankly sucked and never really learned to operate on the same level as the Japanese Mobile Fleet; nevermind the late-war USN. British carriers were still thinking in terms of scouting and raids using handfuls of biplanes in 1942, when the Japanese carriers were already executing coordinated strikes using multiple carrier wings.

British carrier doctrine in fact lagged far behind the USN and the IJN; even in 1945 the much-publicized British armored deck carriers were in fact not able to maintain their own CAPs effectively and had to rely on the USN to shoot down the bombers.

In short, sending any ship at all to Singapore was a reflection of the British government and RN's hubris and failure to realize that the IJN had in fact progressed quite far in their employment of carriers and cruisers. It was practically a suicide mission no matter what ship they sent.

Simon_Jester wrote:Churchill was right, the ships of Force Z were at least as (if not more) survivable, than R-class battleships.

No arguments there but as Zinegata pointed out it was a ridiculous to send even them.

snip carrier list

As noted in my last post I realize that there aren't enough carriers for the British to do much - *but* it comes down to what the political leaders decide need to be done. We are facing a scenario that didn't occur OTL (obviously) so I'm saying it would be a *possibility* that, say, India and Australia get so freaked out and scream loudly enough that the Royal Navy has to do *something* more than in OTL.

The problem is that Renown and the Revenge-class are totally inadequate to fight a first class enemy battleship like Tirpitz. The Queen Elizabeths are at least manageable, being a very progressive World War One design. Nelson and Rodney have modern armament but are slow due to Washington Treaty limitations. Only the King George V-class is truly modern and effective against the Axis' best capital ships.

So from the point of view of British naval strategists, they had to keep most of the King George Vs and at least one large carrier in or near home waters before allocating ships to the Indian Ocean or the Pacific... which is exactly what they did historically. They can't send significantly more ships into the Indian Ocean without creating a situation where Tirpitz can go on a rampage in the Atlantic in relative safety, or where the Italians can seriously consider launching a naval counterattack in the Mediterranean.

We have 4 modern BBs on the allied side (KGVs), verses 4 modern BBs on the Axis side (Tirpitz & the Littorio's). I think the risk of Tirpitz going on a 'rampage' in the Atlantic is vastly overstated. Its a decent ship but any of the QE's, KGVs or Rodneys (even an R if it gets lucky, after all its got the same amount of 15" guns) stand a chance of taking her down, and she *has* to run as she cannot afford to be stuck from home with damage, see what happened to Bismark. Even keeping all 4 KGVs standing guard over Tirpitz and the twins leaves 8 other BBs to face off against the 6 Italians, half of which are over-matched even by the Revenge's.

This again is only talking Brits v.s. Axis. The US could easily send a modern BB or two (or more!) as per OTL, which may then be seen as enough to spare the carriers.

That's pretty much exactly what happened historically. The British shifted about as much carrier strength as they could spare into the Indian Ocean in early 1942, then started transferring it back out after the US won some victories because THEY needed their carriers in order to cover amphibious operations closer to home.

I think the main issue with this scenario is that we just don't know *how* people are going to respond to six US fleet carriers being on the bottom of the ocean. I think it may be enough to cause the British to pool all their carriers in the Indian or Pacific ocean. Take for example the historical Indian ocean raid the Japanese did. There may be fear enough that the Japanese are going to invade Ceylon or try for a amphibious landing in India (fear doesn't need to be rational) that the Admirals/politicians deem it necessary to have 3+ carriers to 'defend' this. Fair enough if you don't think they will.

I'm guessing to sum up my scenario: We have a situation where the *all* of the US Navies carriers are sunk. This is a major "WHAT THE HELL!?!?" moment for the Allies. The only comparable force to the Japanese carriers lies with the British fleet carriers. The Royal Navy already matches the Italians and Germans in modern BBs, and has ~50% more of the older/smaller category BBs. The USA has several BBs that they can send which could free up the carriers.

In OTL when there was a shortage of US carriers in the Pacific one of the British was sent to cover for a while. Based on that, I think that there is a decent chance in this scenario that the British carriers all go east to play defense for a year until the US can churn out Essex's. It would all come down to how those in command react to the major setback of six fleet carriers being sunk. Who knows, maybe they give up on Japan for a year and go 100% against Germany (I don't think the UK could afford to 'abandon' Australia/New Zealand/Ceylon/India though).

If they got sent I certainly don't think they'd win the war. If they met the Kito Budai nine times out of ten they'd get slaughtered.

sending in a twenty-knot battleline dominated by the US's WWI-era Standard battleships would be very messy with the Japanese free to use carriers as well as their surface fleet against it.

Completely agree there - still depends what the brass/politicians decide they need to try. Someone may decide to roll the dice.

Zinegata wrote:The issue you're both missing is that Churchill and elements of the RN massively underestimated the capabilities of the Japanese fleet to begin with; which is why the original force of four R-class ships to Singapore was grossly inadequate and even the updated Force Z even with a carrier was little more than target practice.

The RN in fact was not capable of facing the Japanese fleet on its own in Asian waters given the situation in early 1942; especially Singapore/Malaya which was within range of Japanese land-based air. Even without the losses to the Germans the Royal Navy, as you pointed out, simply did not have very many modern battleships and had a very limited number of carriers.

Worse, British carriers and aircraft frankly sucked... British carrier doctrine in fact lagged far behind the USN and the IJN...

In short, sending any ship at all to Singapore was a reflection of the British government and RN's hubris and failure to realize that the IJN had in fact progressed quite far in their employment of carriers and cruisers. It was practically a suicide mission no matter what ship they sent.

I am not missing any of these facts, and you will note that I said nothing to contradict any of them.

Historically the British fleet did at least manage to parry Japanese operations in the Indian Ocean in 1942, but these operations were taken at the fingertip limit of Japan's military reach, with whatever force Japan could spare from dealing with (first) operations in the East Indies and (later) operations against the USN's carrier arm... and that was about all they accomplished.

My point to ATG is that this was all they could accomplish, realistically. They sent about the maximum possible reinforcement to the Indian Ocean that Britain could sustain while maintaining a war effort in the Mediterranean at all. Theoretically they could have committed, oh, one or two more carriers over the course of the next two to four months. Maybe one or two more modern battleships and a spray of older ones. But the price of that would have been to leave the British position in the Mediterranean much weaker in 1942, allowing the Italian military to recover from its defeats of 1940 and 1941, and effectively removing any hope for Britain to take offensive action against the Axis anywhere.

And even that wouldn't come close to replacing the US fleet that (in this counterfactual) had already been lost.
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Furthermore...

I must disagree with your contention that sending ships to Singapore was hubris or stupidity. At that time, the qualitative difference between Japanese naval aviation and British naval aviation was not apparent to anyone except, perhaps, the Japanese. Force Z was dispatched before Pearl Harbor, when Japan was making considerable efforts to conceal how skilled and effective their carrier force had become. Even after Pearl Harbor... frankly, if you look at what the British did at Taranto, and multiply the damage by six, it would surprise no one that the Kido Butai could do with six carriers what was done to the US Pacific Fleet.

So it would not be obvious to even a very well informed naval expert of late 1941 that the Japanese fleet was qualitatively superior to that of Britain in carrier doctrine, even after Pearl Harbor. One might reasonably conclude that this superiority existed after the operations of early 1942... but by that point Force Z hadn't just already been dispatched, it had already been sunk.

Moreover, Singapore was the keystone of the entire British imperial position in the Far East- the single most important location in the western Pacific, strategically speaking. As long as they held it, their colonial empire was safe from attack and any territories the Japanese were trying to conquer were vulnerable to their raids. If Singapore fell, the reverse became true.

And Singapore had been built up as a naval base. A naval base without a large enough fleet to defend it is not very useful- but a naval base with no fleet is totally useless. The British had to at least hope that they could use a naval task force to deter the Japanese from freely operating amphibious forces in the area around Singapore; it was literally the only realistic hope they had of defending the place.

So the alternative for the British, the choice of not trying to reinforce Singapore, would essentially amount to surrendering the base to the Japanese in the event of war. This was not a decision that could realistically have been made by Churchill's government, nor would it be a particularly wise decision for any government.

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atg wrote:

Simon_Jester wrote:Churchill was right, the ships of Force Z were at least as (if not more) survivable, than R-class battleships.

No arguments there but as Zinegata pointed out it was a ridiculous to send even them.

No, not ridiculous- because Singapore HAD to be reinforced in the face of Japanese saber-rattling in November 1941. The fact that ultimately Japanese naval aviation turned out to be a whole new level of threat compared to the air attacks the Royal Navy had already faced in the Mediterranean...

Well, that was not predictable at the time the decision was made, and even if it had been, the alternative was to effectively abandon Singapore altogether.

snip carrier list

As noted in my last post I realize that there aren't enough carriers for the British to do much - *but* it comes down to what the political leaders decide need to be done. We are facing a scenario that didn't occur OTL (obviously) so I'm saying it would be a *possibility* that, say, India and Australia get so freaked out and scream loudly enough that the Royal Navy has to do *something* more than in OTL.

Yes- but doing much more than historical will not be possible, and fairly soon the British will have to divert at least one if not more of their remaining modern carriers back to the Mediterranean, unless they're just giving up hope of accomplishing anything beyond "do not get conquered by Germans, funnel Lend-Lease to Russia, create significant tripwire for Japanese carrier force if they decide to rampage westward into the Indian Ocean."

We have 4 modern BBs on the allied side (KGVs), verses 4 modern BBs on the Axis side (Tirpitz & the Littorio's). I think the risk of Tirpitz going on a 'rampage' in the Atlantic is vastly overstated...

Oh sure, you think that, but every major Allied naval strategist of the era disagreed with you. Now maybe you're right and they're wrong thanks to the power of hindsight, but their combined opinion at least bears being taken seriously. The threat of a lone German capital ship breaking out in a commerce raid and devastating a convoy or two was taken very seriously in 1940-43.

I mean, think about the Graf Spee's operations in 1939. Not so much the damage they did, as the fact that it took a coordinated manhunt by over twenty ships, seven of them capital-class, to chase Graf Spee down. Now imagine having to do the same thing, only this time you're hunting a real battleship instead of a "pocket battleship." With higher stakes because this time the commerce raider can hit whole convoys, not just isolated ships in the South Atlantic.

That is a threat that the British high command viewed with great alarm. And countering it required a disproportionate number of modern capital ships.

[Tirpitz is] a decent ship but any of the QE's, KGVs or Rodneys (even an R if it gets lucky, after all its got the same amount of 15" guns) stand a chance of taking her down, and she *has* to run as she cannot afford to be stuck from home with damage, see what happened to Bismark. Even keeping all 4 KGVs standing guard over Tirpitz and the twins leaves 8 other BBs to face off against the 6 Italians, half of which are over-matched even by the Revenge's.

Yes... which means that to maintain a significant margin of superiority (enough that you can be sure you'll win, even if you get unlucky), they needed pretty much that whole battleship force in the European theater, with little to spare.

Also, side note, Tirpitz had a top speed of thirty knots, while Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were rated at thirty-one.

By contrast, Nelson and Rodney couldn't get over 23.5 knots, the Queen Elizabeths topped out at twenty-four even in their heyday, and the Revenges were at best capable of twenty-one knots.

The 28-knot King George Vs were the only ships Britain had that could even keep up with the German raiders physically. While most of the others could have fought a gunnery duel against any one of the three German ships with a chance of success, they could never have imposed such a duel on the Germans if the Germans weren't actively seeking it. Any one of the German raiders could literally run away at any time, assuming it hadn't already taken damage to propulsive systems.

So for purposes of countering German capital ship raiders, the slower British ships were only truly useful as 'defenders' escorting a fixed target the Germans would have to attack. To actually hunt down the raider they were limited to the King George Vs, the carriers, and the cruisers.

This again is only talking Brits v.s. Axis. The US could easily send a modern BB or two (or more!) as per OTL, which may then be seen as enough to spare the carriers.

The US only had two 'modern' (i.e. 1930s) battleships at the time, of the North Carolina-class.

The Americans' older battleships were of the "Standard battleship" series built during and shortly after World War One. They had adequate firepower and protection (at least the newer ones did)... but none were capable of more than 21 knots. Again, this made them inadequate for catching German capital ship raiders. They could defend a target, but could not realistically catch and kill a raider before it struck.

That's pretty much exactly what happened historically. The British shifted about as much carrier strength as they could spare into the Indian Ocean in early 1942, then started transferring it back out after the US won some victories because THEY needed their carriers in order to cover amphibious operations closer to home.

I think the main issue with this scenario is that we just don't know *how* people are going to respond to six US fleet carriers being on the bottom of the ocean. I think it may be enough to cause the British to pool all their carriers in the Indian or Pacific ocean. Take for example the historical Indian ocean raid the Japanese did. There may be fear enough that the Japanese are going to invade Ceylon or try for a amphibious landing in India (fear doesn't need to be rational) that the Admirals/politicians deem it necessary to have 3+ carriers to 'defend' this. Fair enough if you don't think they will.

I think that unless the Japanese actually do start pushing west of Singapore and Burma, the British carriers will do more or less what they did historically- deploy to the Indian Ocean, then turn around and start operating elsewhere as soon as Japan's strategic focus shifts.

Then again, that might well not happen... in which case this has major effects on the ability of the British to sustain operations in the Mediterranean theater even if they are not directly attacked by the Japanese.

sending in a twenty-knot battleline dominated by the US's WWI-era Standard battleships would be very messy with the Japanese free to use carriers as well as their surface fleet against it.

Completely agree there - still depends what the brass/politicians decide they need to try. Someone may decide to roll the dice.

Honestly, I think it far more likely that the arguments by Roosevelt, King, and so on would favor NOT sending out any more forces (especially aging/obsolete forces) in penny-packet attacks. These men were not stupid and were generally willing to take necessary time to gather their forces rather than strike before they were ready. Without carrier escort, and with so much demonstration of what carrier aviation can do to a poorly defended fleet with air attacks in the past few months, I don't think anyone would seriously propose sending out the US battleline by itself to engage in any major operations.

I think that the best plan would be submarine warfare. Our sub commanders and tactics tended to be superior to the Japanese, and subs are much quicker to build than large capital ships. I can see us sending as many wolfpacks as possible into the Pacific with orders to sink anything that moves.

You won't win a war that way.

All this does it push Japanese defeat later in the war unless they can use the respite in the Pacific to wrap things up in China. I doubt that. Even that that just stretches it out even longer. Bit will the US stick around for that longer timeline?

The US will simply rebuild its carrier fleet, and I would bet we would end up with more carriers than IRL as the materials for ships like the Iowa's and the Alaska's would probably be dedicated to more smaller escorts and carriers. The question then becomes if the US is willing to wait the one to two years to prosecute the follow up fleet actions. With the loss of New Guinea and probable successful knocking out of Australia from the war its going to be a much longer and harder slog across the Pacific than it was in reality even if the end result would eventually be the same. Will the US stick around for that, especially with a years after serious defeats (PH, Phillipines, and now Coral Sea and Midway as defeats on top of that) with no follow on victories to sustain the war fighting spirit?

I think what Borgholio is saying is that in this scenario the US could afford to avoid a decisive sea-battle and cripple Japan via unrestricted submarine warfare alone. Like the UK, Japan was not self-sufficient and depended heavily on imports for survival (especially oil). Also like the UK, Japan depended heavily upon its merchant fleet in order to sustain itself. However, while the UK also had Canada and the USA to fall back on for support, Japan had no one. Historically the Allied submarine campaign was just as important if not more so than their surface operations as it wiped out Japan's ability to ship goods and materials. Even if the Allies had never actually set foot on Japanese occupied territory the Japanese economy would have been on the point of collapse by 1945. In the Pacific theatre, having resources at your disposal means nothing if you have no way to ship it!

Of course, in this scenario the US would still need to build ships and planes to reconquer lost ground - but that would have been made a lot easier if Japan was unable to move anything.

Yep, that's pretty much what I was saying. I fully agree that we would need battleships and carriers to take back the Japanese-held islands, destroyers to escort, and so forth. But subs would be a fine stopgap measure since they are relatively quick to build, can be built in many more shipyards than capital ships, and hit way above their weight. Long supply lines to Midway for instance would be incredibly juicy targets for an aggressive submarine skipper.

Simon_Jester wrote:I am not missing any of these facts, and you will note that I said nothing to contradict any of them.

Yes, but the point is Churchill was still wrong to have kept Force Z in Singapore by December 8th. It was clearly mass suicide at this point, and they would have known it was already mass suicide well before this had they bothered to not allow hubris to allow them to grossly underestimate the capabilites of the IJN.

Historically the British fleet did at least manage to parry Japanese operations in the Indian Ocean in 1942, but these operations were taken at the fingertip limit of Japan's military reach, with whatever force Japan could spare from dealing with (first) operations in the East Indies and (later) operations against the USN's carrier arm... and that was about all they accomplished.

By "parry" you mean the Japanese did as they pleased, sank HMS Hermes and bombed Colombo, and withdrew of their own accord because of logistical constraints. None of which really mattered because the naval aspect didn't actually affect the ground fighting for India.

My point to ATG is that this was all they could accomplish, realistically. They sent about the maximum possible reinforcement to the Indian Ocean that Britain could sustain while maintaining a war effort in the Mediterranean at all. Theoretically they could have committed, oh, one or two more carriers over the course of the next two to four months. Maybe one or two more modern battleships and a spray of older ones. But the price of that would have been to leave the British position in the Mediterranean much weaker in 1942, allowing the Italian military to recover from its defeats of 1940 and 1941, and effectively removing any hope for Britain to take offensive action against the Axis anywhere.

Those British carriers again would be little more than target practice had they been deployed. The IJN is a completely different beast from the Luftwaffe. You could have deployed every British carrier with Force Z and it would still have not been enough. To not play the carrier vs carrier or battleship vs battleship game was in fact the only way to "win".

I must disagree with your contention that sending ships to Singapore was hubris or stupidity. At that time, the qualitative difference between Japanese naval aviation and British naval aviation was not apparent to anyone except, perhaps, the Japanese. Force Z was dispatched before Pearl Harbor, when Japan was making considerable efforts to conceal how skilled and effective their carrier force had become. Even after Pearl Harbor... frankly, if you look at what the British did at Taranto, and multiply the damage by six, it would surprise no one that the Kido Butai could do with six carriers what was done to the US Pacific Fleet.

So it would not be obvious to even a very well informed naval expert of late 1941 that the Japanese fleet was qualitatively superior to that of Britain in carrier doctrine, even after Pearl Harbor. One might reasonably conclude that this superiority existed after the operations of early 1942... but by that point Force Z hadn't just already been dispatched, it had already been sunk.

Moreover, Singapore was the keystone of the entire British imperial position in the Far East- the single most important location in the western Pacific, strategically speaking. As long as they held it, their colonial empire was safe from attack and any territories the Japanese were trying to conquer were vulnerable to their raids. If Singapore fell, the reverse became true.

And Singapore had been built up as a naval base. A naval base without a large enough fleet to defend it is not very useful- but a naval base with no fleet is totally useless. The British had to at least hope that they could use a naval task force to deter the Japanese from freely operating amphibious forces in the area around Singapore; it was literally the only realistic hope they had of defending the place.

So the alternative for the British, the choice of not trying to reinforce Singapore, would essentially amount to surrendering the base to the Japanese in the event of war. This was not a decision that could realistically have been made by Churchill's government, nor would it be a particularly wise decision for any government.

The problem with this mode of thinking is that it ignores that Force Z was destroyed on December 10th, or days after the obliteration of battleship row at Pearl Harbor, which already demonstrated that the IJN in fact possessed far advanced carrier strike abilities than previously thought.

Moreover, what you're forgetting is that Force Z was never premised to stand alone. Even if the British hubris made them blind to Japanese carrier advances (when Chennault and his Flying Tigers were already reporting that the Japanese were flying much more advanced aircraft types since the 30s to anyone who would listen), they were fully aware that the IJN possessed an actual battlefleet, including two ships of the Nagato class, four Kongos, and four WW1-era dreadnoughts; all of which could easily crush a task force consisting of only a KGV and a battlecruiser.

Force Z was in fact supposed to operate in concert with the American battle line, giving the combined British + American fleet something like 10 battleships to face the Japanese battle line. The problem by December 8 is that the American battle line was already gone and that you now had just these two British capital ships and four destroyers against ten IJN battleships plus their cruiser and destroyer escorts.

Force Z should in fact have withdrawn to the Indian Ocean on the 8th. Staying was suicide at this point, because the Japanese had in fact achieved naval and air supremacy no matter how you count it. That it didn't withdraw and instead went on what was the equivalent of a death ride against suspected troop transport convoys (a task that should have been left to lighter warships - indeed ABDA's destroyers and cruisers proved much more successful in this regard) was again an issue of pride overriding military sense.

Tribble wrote:I think what Borgholio is saying is that in this scenario the US could afford to avoid a decisive sea-battle and cripple Japan via unrestricted submarine warfare alone.

The big problem with this is range; the distance from the US west coast to Japan (and Japan's critical sea lanes running down to their oil supply in the Indies) is so great that waging a submarine war at such a distance would be... I'm not sure how well we actually managed in that state, but it's challenging.

You need naval bases closer to the front lines than Honolulu for a submarine war to become truly effective against Japan, I would expect.

Simon_Jester wrote:You need naval bases closer to the front lines than Honolulu for a submarine war to become truly effective against Japan, I would expect.

Pearl was one of the two main bases for the US submarine force, so it's certainly possible to sustain a campaign from there.

Simon_Jester wrote:

Tribble wrote:I think what Borgholio is saying is that in this scenario the US could afford to avoid a decisive sea-battle and cripple Japan via unrestricted submarine warfare alone.

The big problem with this is range; the distance from the US west coast to Japan (and Japan's critical sea lanes running down to their oil supply in the Indies) is so great that waging a submarine war at such a distance would be... I'm not sure how well we actually managed in that state, but it's challenging.

You need naval bases closer to the front lines than Honolulu for a submarine war to become truly effective against Japan, I would expect.

Actually it wasn't that hard. The Gato-class and Balao-class submarines had a range of over 10 thousand miles, so they could get all the way to the Japanese coast and back with room for a decent sized patrol.