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.
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.
