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ComradeClaus wrote:@atg

logistical limit at Pearl?! At the same time they sent their carriers there, they also sent invasion forces to the Philippines & indochina/malaysia, do you know when PoW & Repulse were sunk?Dec 10th.

they landed 17,000 troops of Yamashita's 25th army a full hour before pearl harbor. & 85 transports delivered Gen. homma's 14th Army, 57,000 strong for the Luzon landings, certainly enough to take oahu from the US. Don't you thinik? especially w/ 6 carriers giving air support. The Storage tanks, if taken intact had sufficient fuel for the fleet to prepare a strike on Panama. W/ the canal facilities destroyed, sending supplies to Australia And sending the Atlantic fleet would be much harder.

Do you have any comprehension of how logistics work? Have you looked at a map any time recently? The Philippines are something like 1/4 to 1/3 the distance from Japan that Hawaii is. Indochina had already been occupied and is even closer to where they sent their troops. To hit Hawaii IIRC already streched the fleet supply train to the maximum, and thats with only being there long enough to launch a single air attack of 2/3 waves and then get the hell out of there. You are now proposing that they can fully support landing 60,000 troop and keep them supplied, AND keep the fleet supplied, for however long it takes to take the islands. NOT GOING TO HAPPEN. Saying that Japan could send troops to Hawaii without any logistical problems because they could send troops to SE Asia, is like saying Hitler shouldn't have had any logistical issues at Moscow or Stanlingrad because he could send troops to France ok.

Prince of Wales and Repulse were also sunk by land based air from the already occupied IndoChina so that example means precisely damm all.

Now lets assume that somehow the Japanese can take the islands and magically can use all the fuel there. The distance, based on my quick map reconing, from Hawaii to Panama is 20% longer than the distance they travelled from Japan to Hawaii. Something that already streched them to the maximum. And this time they will be depleted of ammo/aircraft/repairs from waging a campaign. NOT GOING TO HAPPEN. And of course while this is happening the US is going to be sitting around doing nothing.... yeah right

And you wanna know the biggest fuck up the japanese made, which according to you, they had no resources for? Midway. They sent 2 carriers to the Aluetians & 2 others elsewhere with all the carriers together, they'd have sufficient fighters to deal w/ the Dauntless strike that won us the battle. Every time, the Japanese spread their forces when they needed to CONCENTRATE them to overpower an obstacle.

Tell me where I said they couldn't do Midway..... Anyway IIRC the two carriers at the Aluetions were light carriers, and the "2 others elsewhere" were sitting in yards being repaired. So 2 carriers that aren't going to make much difference compared to the four fleet carriers and the couple of light carriers already there.. and two that couldn't be used for operations anyway.

Ref. "History of the Second World War" B.H.L. Hart, Ch 17 & Ch 23
Plus if they didn't waste resources on that Shinano monster (over 60,000 tons) & used the steel to build more subs (at least 30 long-range types), the better to overcome our massive fleet as it sorties into the pacific via the NWest passage & Tiera del Fuego. Escort carriers can be built on the cheap, since we did it, surely the Japanese could use their merchant ship production to turn out a few (dozen) to support their fleet carriers. And their carrier planes were too flawed. No armor protection, the Val carried a mere 551lb bomb & the Kate had a weak 7.7mm for defence, cost them too many of their experienced crews. Plus they delayed the replacements for too long.

Japan never had enough merchants to transport the raw goods it needed from its captured territories. Turning merchant production to warships isn't going to happen. Also saying this steel can be for x instead of y doesn't work unless they had the facilities to build extra x than they already were. If submarine production yards are already at max then going "we've got 60,000 tons more steel!" isn't going to matter a damm. Also IIRC building more carriers isn't going to help Japan anyway because after Midway they didn't have enough pilots to fully plane the carriers they already had.

And you don't know a damn thing about naval transports. It would have been no trouble for a barge or freighter to unload 60 ton Tigers at a dock in Okinawa, as long as our airpower & subs weren't in the area. How do you think the Germans got Tigers to Africa? The Tiger entered service in Aug '42 while the Panther joined the fight in Jan '43, enough time for the Japanese to get the blueprints & reverse engineer it. We would've suffered far higher losses if the Japanese had REAL armor to throw at us rather than Banzai charges rushing our machine guns.

Turns out having plans doesn't mean you can make them instantly. Anyway I made a mistake I meant how are the Tigers going to move around on the islands when they had trouble with bridges and mud back in Europe? I'm fully up on the terrain the islands had but an island with IIRC second rate infrastructure is going to struggle to support tanks that infracstructure in Europe struggled with. Actually another good question is would the Japans even have enough fuel to support enough Tiger's to be worthwhile? They struggles with oil/petroleum/fuel as it was.

ComradeClaus wrote: And you don't know a damn thing about naval transports. It would have been no trouble for a barge or freighter to unload 60 ton Tigers at a dock in Okinawa, as long as our airpower & subs weren't in the area. How do you think the Germans got Tigers to Africa? The Tiger entered service in Aug '42 while the Panther joined the fight in Jan '43, enough time for the Japanese to get the blueprints & reverse engineer it. We would've suffered far higher losses if the Japanese had REAL armor to throw at us rather than Banzai charges rushing our machine guns.

How'd that heavy armor do at Sicily and Salerno against cruiser gunfire?

This is all so incredibly retarded.

Yeah... ComradeClaus was amusing for a while but is clearly highly intent on proving that he will never learn anything and if anything, actively get stupider.

It's not everyday we get a published historian to tell us that everything that has been written and acted upon in logistics is wrong Skimmer. We should savor the chance to throw ourselves before this alter of collected wisdom.

But seriously, you're still the man

Sea Skimmer wrote:Yeah... ComradeClaus was amusing for a while but is clearly highly intent on proving that he will never learn anything and if anything, actively get stupider.

Couldn't we just ask a super to enforce PR3 - either he proves his claims of grades etc, concede that he lied, or simply get titled/booted?

I think that so far I've seen him regurgitate a lot of "facts" but his conclusions from them are all wrong. Feels like someone in the spectrum without the meds.

ComradeClaus wrote:@Zinegata, "11:2"... how cute, you really mean 5.5:1. Don't try to make the ratio look bigger by puting a larger number in front. you wouldn't use 11/2 for a fraction would you? You'd use 5 1/2.

Okay, I'm gonna invoke "Claus is avoiding the argument" now.

The ratio of 11:2 is exactly the same as 5.5:1. The only reason why I use 11:2 is because that's what Overy uses in "Why the Allies Won".

What's important is that Japan was being massively outbuilt. Higher than the standard military ratio for attack, which is 3:1. Claus is side-stepping the argument by stupid semantic wrangling and ad-hominem attacks.

The Game Designer's quote is easy to explain. It's a salve to believe victory was impossible no matter what, since the alternative, a possible victory forefeited due to incompetence, is just too painful to accept.

No, what the designer is saying is that even if Japan had taken fucking Pearl Harbor (which he rightly describes as "shooting for the moon"), they would have eventually lost the war regardless. Japan was too weak to hold out against America's massive industrial might. And that's before you consider that the US could just drop an atomic bomb on Tokyo in August 1945 and end the war regardless.

It's noteworthy that the game he designed (Fire in the Sky) does incorporate logistics - which is the aspect you keep gleefully ignoring in favor of your harebrained schemes and wonder weapons.

Japan was in a desperate position from the get-go; their surprise attack on America was little more than mass suicide.

Zinegata wrote:Japan was in a desperate position from the get-go; their surprise attack on America was little more than mass suicide.

This leads to a key point - Pearl Harbour was part of an overall strategy to acheive a political end of the war about to start, not a military one. Japan already recognised that they couldn't beat America in a traditional straight-up fight so instead tried to make a victory in the coming war unwinnable politically for the US leaders.

atg wrote:

Zinegata wrote:Japan was in a desperate position from the get-go; their surprise attack on America was little more than mass suicide.

This leads to a key point - Pearl Harbour was part of an overall strategy to acheive a political end of the war about to start, not a military one. Japan already recognised that they couldn't beat America in a traditional straight-up fight so instead tried to make a victory in the coming war unwinnable politically for the US leaders.

Problem is, the way the Japanese started the war with the US made it impossible for them achieve their political objectives. After Pearl Harbor the US would never accept peace with Japan without the latter surrendering unconditionally. Considering the Japanese attitude of the time, this would only happen after Japan was in ruins. At least Japan surrendered quick enough to prevent more nukings on its soil and an invasion that would have made the rest of the Pacific War look like a picnic.

This discussion has actually made me wonder about something that's been nagging me for some time. Could Japan have decided to ignore attacking US territories in the Pacific and Southeast Asia and focus on invading the European colonies only? Or was the threat of strangulation from the Philippines too great?

Could Japan have decided to ignore attacking US territories in the Pacific and Southeast Asia and focus on invading the European colonies only? Or was the threat of strangulation from the Philippines too great?

No, the threat from the Philippines was simply too great. Remember, the reason the Japanese went to war was, among other things, to gain access to the oil in the Dutch East Indies, without which they would have been forced to abandon their invasion of China. The Philippines lay directly between the Dutch East Indies and Japan, and submarines and aircraft based there could have interfered with any attempt to invade the islands or ship the oil back to Japan. The US had already signaled its opposition to further Japanese expansion with a series of increasingly restrictive embargos, including the one on oil that created the need for East Indies oil in the first place. Japan’s options in 1941 were to withdraw from China, which would have been unacceptable, attempt to sit out the American embargo, which would result in the Japanese running out of oil and having to withdraw from China, and war with the US, which might have resulted in defeat, but might have resulted in a more self-sufficient Japan that would be less susceptible to US economic pressure in the future.

Problem is, the way the Japanese started the war with the US made it impossible for them achieve their political objectives. After Pearl Harbor the US would never accept peace with Japan without the latter surrendering unconditionally.

To be fair, it would be easy to look back at Japan’s previous military experiences and conclude that a surprise attack would not rule out a short war. The Japanese attacked Port Arthur before the Russians had received Japan’s declaration of war, and that worked out reasonably well for them. Why would the Japanese have thought that attacking Pearl Harbor would have so enraged the American public?

Not 'liberating' the Philippines would also heavily undermine the political underpinnings of the Great East Asian co prosperity sphere. Japan expected to legitimize its rule on the basis that it had completely destroyed the western colonial system and replaced it with an asian system. We all tend to laugh at the co prosperity sphere in hindsight; but for Japanese planning it was a dead serious thing, and indeed Japan did get considerable local support in Indonesia and Burma over it. Less so in Malay and far less so the Philippines because these areas had been treated better, while the Philippines was already scheduled for independence.

Japan later undermined itself by directly annexing several islands into the Japanese Empire in 1943; while declaring several others ‘independent’ but by then they’d already become well established militarily. The co prosperity sphere pretext did help reduce the required number of Japanese occupation troops if nothing else; which was good because they didn’t have nearly enough of them. Thus the totally out of control guerrilla problem that formed in the Philippines. Not taking the Philippines was a non option for every reason and the US had already made it pretty damn clear that a Japanese move on the Dutch East Indies would mean war any way about it.

Sea Skimmer wrote:Not 'liberating' the Philippines would also heavily undermine the political underpinnings of the Great East Asian co prosperity sphere. Japan expected to legitimize its rule on the basis that it had completely destroyed the western colonial system and replaced it with an asian system. We all tend to laugh at the co prosperity sphere in hindsight; but for Japanese planning it was a dead serious thing, and indeed Japan did get considerable local support in Indonesia and Burma over it. Less so in Malay and far less so the Philippines because these areas had been treated better, while the Philippines was already scheduled for independence.

Japan later undermined itself by directly annexing several islands into the Japanese Empire in 1943; while declaring several others ‘independent’ but by then they’d already become well established militarily. The co prosperity sphere pretext did help reduce the required number of Japanese occupation troops if nothing else; which was good because they didn’t have nearly enough of them. Thus the totally out of control guerrilla problem that formed in the Philippines. Not taking the Philippines was a non option for every reason and the US had already made it pretty damn clear that a Japanese move on the Dutch East Indies would mean war any way about it.

I'm away from my sources at the moment, but did the US actually make it clear that an attack on the Dutch would equal war? While there was the two conference with the British, the press release and etc, wasn't there some antagonism between the US and the British regarding this very issue? Or am I confusing Thailand with the Dutch?

Wait, where did Claus claim he was a published historian?

Thanas wrote:Wait, where did Claus claim he was a published historian?

He didn't, he claimed to be negotiating a book deal.

http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... uote]Let's see, passed every regents global studies/history class from 7-12 grade (Straight A++/ 99% grade average) even recieving a scholarship for my marks. Also getting among the highest grades for history in the school's history. Plus was in the top 3 in every year of science (A+/ 95% avg) In college majored in European History (minored in Asian history). Also I'm in negotiations to get my first book publshed. (A book on what else? EUROPEAN history)
[/quote]
http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... 9#p3547189

The book I'm getting published is about logistics & production relationships in war. Another is a what-if book similar to "Luftwaffe Victorious" by mike Spick. Except mine doesn't negate the premise like his POS. Really, his was a toptal waste of a dollar. At least I know how NOT to write a book!

...Yeah. That is not impressive at all, though. I mean, every whacko out there who strung a few sentences together may claim that he is in negotiations to get a book published. I mean, if I write "PLZ PRINT THIS KTHXBAI" on a sheet of toilet paper and mail it to an agent, I might be in "negotiations".

Still: Claus, I expect you to provide proof of your accomplishments to me. Via PM if necessary. I will keep privacy, but your claims are a bit outlandish to be believed. Especially if you claim to talk about logistics and production capabilities while showing gross ignorance on both topics and very, very poor spelling.

PainRack wrote: I'm away from my sources at the moment, but did the US actually make it clear that an attack on the Dutch would equal war? While there was the two conference with the British, the press release and etc, wasn't there some antagonism between the US and the British regarding this very issue? Or am I confusing Thailand with the Dutch?

I couldn't tell you exactly when, but the US was warning Japan away from the Dutch East Indies even before the Fall of France and the oil embargo itself. Later on Japan actually hinted in negotiations that it would like to simply militarily split the Dutch East Indies between the US and Japan; I believe this became an explicit demand only in the final message delivered on December 7th 1941 though.

Sea Skimmer wrote:

PainRack wrote: I'm away from my sources at the moment, but did the US actually make it clear that an attack on the Dutch would equal war? While there was the two conference with the British, the press release and etc, wasn't there some antagonism between the US and the British regarding this very issue? Or am I confusing Thailand with the Dutch?

I couldn't tell you exactly when, but the US was warning Japan away from the Dutch East Indies even before the Fall of France and the oil embargo itself. Later on Japan actually hinted in negotiations that it would like to simply militarily split the Dutch East Indies between the US and Japan; I believe this became an explicit demand only in the final message delivered on December 7th 1941 though.

Thanks. I found my source and I misread it. The misgivings seems to be over command issues for the eventual ABDA and the disposition of the Asiatic fleet.

Did the USSR have oil fields in eastern Siberia that it knew about in the late 30's-early 40's?

What about the following alternative WWII scenario:

When the USA cuts off the Japanese oil supply, instead of planning to attack the USA, the Japanese make an agreement with Germany to attack the USSR from the east (A real invasion, not just little border skirmishes), while the Germans attack from the west. Learning their lesson from Napoleon, the Axis starts its invasion in May rather than waiting till June.

After the occupation of France, the Germans stay on the defensive against the UK, skipping the whole battle of Britain.

In the USA, the proposition to join the Allied side in WWII is highly unpopular in Congress, as the US would not have been attacked and the isolationist Republicans could paint the war as an effort to save Communism in Russia. (Many Democrats, particularly from the South, wouldn't be strong supporters of the war either.)

With no US help, the RAF is unable to do much against the Luftwaffe, which has not been decimated by the B of B, and is flying over friendly skies.

Attacked on 2 fronts, the USSR succumbs to the Axis. The Germans set up a puppet govt in Russia, a la Vichy. From the Caucasus, the Germans invade Persia (Iran), from which they threaten Mesopotamia (Iraq). Again, with no US help for the UK 8th Army, Rommel and the Afrika Korps are able to at least hold their own and continue to threaten Egypt.

With their Empire being threatened and never having been attacked on home soil, support for the war wanes in the UK. Churchill loses the next election to a Labour pacifist, who is able to make a deal with Hitler, who was never very interested in any UK posessions in the first place.

The war is over.

The key is convincing the Japanese to attack the USSR instead of Pearl Harbour, which could be done if this could satisfy their need for oil.

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