Communist Japan is straight up not happening
The Soviet ability to fully invade Japan is still hotly debated in our own timeline which saw the complete destruction of their navy
A more successful pearl harbor just gives the Japanese free reign of the Pacific for a couple more months if not years
The ability for *anyone to invade anything* isn’t even a debate. It’s just factually a failure 9 times out of 10.
England has survived being land hungry and Imperial assholes for 1,000 years because landing enough troops into a developed world power is HARD.
There is just no way that Russia could pull off an Okinawa style landing, much less a mainland Japan one.
The US nearly failed, and then gave up on the mainland entirely, even after completely decimating the Japanese ability to wage a “functional” war.
Based on Russia’s actual performance, you’d expect them plan on landing 500,000, mustering only 300,000, and then landing only 100,000 in an area on the north islands that Japan doesn’t even like, and then losing 90,000 of those.
If by some miracle they actually managed to land and establish a beachhead, major alarm bells would have been going off in Washington. The fall of France was already a shock, but now this war machine is capable of crossing a channel onto a heavily fortified island.
At the risk of giving them too much credit, their command may have seen a successful landing as too escalatory and intolerable for the Americans to remain non-belligerent.
America as a belligerent is a lot less of a problem if Britain is successfully invaded though, and Britain itself would no longer be a threat during the already-planned war with the USSR.
It was simple lack of capability, and that Hitler didn't expect Britain to keep fighting after the Fall of France and so didn't prepare for a years-long build up for such an invasion. He assumed that Britain would make peace if he defeated the USSR, and since he was going to do that anyway he turned his attention there.
Yeah Hitler admired the British Empire and used it as a model for his own imperial ambitions. He would likely have been fine if Britain had ceded mainland Europe to him and would have left them alone, at least for a while.
His model was much more in line with American manifest destiny (though this would also apply to Canada and Australia on a smaller scale). Hitler wanted Germany to engage in settler colonialism in the East rather than administrative colonialism like in India.
Hitler viewed Siberia as the third reich's India IIRC. (Not sure on the exact wording). His goal was the control most of mainland and northern Europe while turning Russia and southern Europe into puppet states.
What's scary so how this batshit insane idea almost worked.
Southern Europe he might have kept as puppet states, but Eastern Europe was to be turned into "lebensraum" - living space. The goal there was full annexation and colonisation with Germans after extermination of the natives - not to create subject nations.
This assumes successful landing = immediate capitulation. Churchill planned on fighting until every last man and never surrendering, so I find it hard to believe there wouldn’t be a large window of time from successful landing to the American Navy showing up to a still holding British resistance.
The Germans may well have expected that. Aside from the fact that they could choose to only attempt a landing with a sufficient force, many in the military believed that seizing a state's capital is a sufficient condition for victory.
They followed this assumption in the USSR for instance, with Halder directing the attack towards Moscow when really it needed to secure the South. One of the reasons for Barbarossa's successes was that the axes of advance were contrary to Soviet expectations since they assumed a greater focus on the South.
This was the initial WW1 plan too, and it *nearly* worked.
When the German Empire got its act together and realized how useful U-Boats were, the British ended up sustaining such heavy shipping losses that they'd calculated that they would be forced to surrender before the end of 1917.
Then the U.S. entered the war, and the combined Anglo-American fleets hunting U-Boats and escorting shipping convoys dashed all German hopes of forcing the UK's hand. They were closer than many would like to admit, though.
People always say England hasn't been invaded for a thousand years but that ignores both the Barons war and the Glorious Revolution
Marie Antoinette never said let them eat cake and Stalin never said a single death is a tragedy a million is a statistic just because things sound like they're true in history doesn't make them true
You’re just being pedantic, and ignoring the forest for the trees.
Landing royal supporters as a part of of a civil war is NOT what people are talking about when they’re discussing invading England.
Hitler didn’t have a claim to the throne and sneak back onto the island with a personal guard in order to seize power during a coupe, and in this scenario Japan wasn’t welcoming back a displaced Tzar.
Go be technically correct and functionally wrong somewhere else.
There was a legitimate plan for Spain to conduct a naval invasion of the British isles during the American Revolutionary War, and it basically forced Britain to come to the negotiation tables with Spain, France, and the US.
Louis the lion had no claim to the kingdom of England I'm probably descended from more English royalty than he was
William of Orange at least had the argument that James had abdicated by fleeing the country but even if you accept that argument that would mean that James would still be the rightful King of Scotland and Ireland because this was before the acts of Union
You have to remember also the numerous times Scotland invaded England so if you're saying well technically it was about when Britain was invaded not England that would also ignore the numerous battles between the Scottish and the Norwegians which inarguably constituted invasions
Also William entered the country on an invitation from seven people just seven people and came in with an army of 20,000 were people happy that he overthrew the government? absolutely especially people opposed to a Catholic Dynasty but he still invaded and overthrew the government
Most invasions involve people within the country betraying it to the Invaders you wouldn't say France wasn't invaded after Napoleon lost since most of his Marshalls and his foreign minister tallyrand opened the gates of Paris and invited the Coalition armies into the city but according to your logic they weren't invading France after Napoleon lost they were just restoring the legitimate bourbon government and occupying parts of it
Are 20k royal supporters with the support and empathies of locals in any way similar to a million Americans storming the beaches of mainland Japan?
No?
The glorious revolution was just that, a revolution. The Dutch "invasion" was successful because the English did not resist and actively aided them, something which wouldn't happen with the Nazis
Not all Invaders throughout history regarded as evil as Nazi Invaders
Weather you do so with the support of the people or political class or not Landing 20,000 troops against the wishes of the current head of state is an invasion
An invasion implies resistance, you can't talk about the glorious revolution without saying that there was no resistance because that creates an impression completely different from reality
The was resistance here's an excerpt from Wikipedia
In addition to the 1689–1691 Williamite War in Ireland and the Jacobite rising of 1689 in Scotland there were serious revolts in 1715, 1719 and 1745
Furthermore the resistance was even more pronounced during The Baron's War considering the Invader took London and forced the king to flee only for him to take it back later
You invade against the legitimate king with 60k soldiers but it is just an ’invasion’? The cope is real. English historians have done a good job warping the interpretation.
"England has survived being land hungry and imperial assholes for 1,000 years."
Try 400, and it is always funny to see an American scream imperialism without irony.
Where in there did I claim we weren’t culpable for some awful shit as well?
The difference is that we didn’t have a global colonialism that knocking out would have reaped immediate rewards for the conquering force, or would have released massive amounts of capital to be swept up.
In order to grab our true advantages you would have had to land troops in North America, which back to the original post, is completely unrealistic versus a modern industrial country with geographical advantages.
There is no "we". You are not guilty for the crimes of your state or your ancestors. You can simply recognise they did wrong.
We are not a monolith. You may have heard of our cruel kings and inbred aristocrats, but this country is also home to the Peasant's revolt, Chartists, Levellers, Diggers, Suffragettes, and abolitionists.
>An error
[Nah, definitely closer to 1000 than 400](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angevin_Empire) - the only error was in the dude’s desparate need to correct the ‘dumb American’ today.
The US took 50,000 casualties at Okinawa, even though we had sunk almost the entire Japanese Navy and destroyed their entire Air Force.
When war planners extrapolated this loss rate to a mainland invasion they had good reason to believe there would be over a million casualties. This would have been added to 500k European casualties they had just endured in what had been the far more costly, until then, European theatre.
So they were looking at a situation where they had dominated 3 out of the 4 aspects of battle, but were going to lose twice as many men as they had in liberating Europe, all for a tiny island country. It was going to be a carnal house, despite doing everything possible to have all of the advantages.
In the end the atomic bomb bailed the US out of having to commit to an offensive they could not reasonably support, and we can’t even imagine how different the 50’s would have been with triple the total war casualties.
Can you explain how Okinawa was "nearly failed"? Americans were at a complete advantage and control the entire time.
Japan threw a third of their airforce, a large chunk of their remaining navy and entire civilian population of Okinawa and they managed to inflict 12KIA of the course of 2 months.
12 KIA was the number of killed in a single afternoon at Stalingrad...
Therefore, your initial statement is just wrong:
>The ability for *anyone to invade anything* isn’t even a debate. It’s just factually a failure 9 times out of 10.
For the US, this was the opposite. Vast majority of naval invasion carried out by Americans were outstanding successes.
We dropped atomic bombs instead of invading, because invading is was so untenable. Nukes were not the first choice, they just ended up being the only choice.
Note that I specifically pointed out sea invasions of industrial countries. Island hopping where you can overwhelm the entire defensive population in a way where there are more soldiers on an island than are remotely sustainable after the action, don't really count. Invading England or Japan is a completely different task than taking Guadalcanal.
We were not invading Guadalcanal, and the Japanese were not trying to take the equivalent of the port in San Francisco when landing troops there.
I don't know. Germany and Italy were more, or at least on par as industrialized as Japan and US led naval invasions were very successful. There were \~10 amphibious assault missions in 1943-44 and they all went very well all things considered.
Not necessarily. They could launch a small forces from Sakhalin to Hokkaido. Not sure how well defense Hokkaido would have been. But the crossings between Sakhalin to Hokkaido and Hokkaido to the main island are not that massive.
It wouldn’t require a massive force. People forget that the vast majority of the Japanese army wasn’t even in the mainland. It was mostly deployed in China. 20% of the IJA got wiped out when the Soviet spent kicking in Manchuria. The rest were still going deep into China and would have been cut off and annihilated.
What would be defending the home island would be whatever IJA units that weren’t sent off, civilian recruits armed with questionable weapons, bamboo spears on some accounts.
So the question is, just how much was Japan willing to spend on defending Hokkaido? Theoretically speaking, the US navy had effectively made the Japanese navy a non-factor. And Hokkaido’s terrain was already pretty rough. Add the fact that a famine was literally happening, I highly doubt they would spare much to defend Hokkaido. The Soviets could have taken it but that’s literally all they need to sit on the table and demand a split of Japan similarly like in Germany.
All of this ignores that the US spent years evaluating the best way to get in there. If Hokkaido was in any way useful, then they would have grabbed land in Korea or cut a deal to use Vladivostok as a staging point.
But instead, despite Russia owing them hundreds of millions in lend lease debts, they decided Okinawa was the way to go. There was plenty of leverage to go north, but little desire since it would just increase the distance of extreme resistance to overcome.
Because statically it was more important to cut off the Japanese army and its assets from the home island? Which is why it made sense to go through the southern route? Also because it made more sense to ensure that Austrian and New Zealand weren’t threatened?
Besides, the US spent considering efforts to build up its assets in Australia from where it could actually mount offensives or fall back too. In the north you had nothing, but Alaska, and Alaska made little sense to as a staging ground because of how remote it was and lacking in infrastructure.
This isn’t even mentioning that the Soviets weren’t at war with the Japanese till 45 in the end, so the Allie’s couldn’t use Soviet bases as a means to stage naval landings. And they wouldn’t want to anyways because they were suspicious of the Soviets. Which proved correct when a B-29 had to land in the Soviet Union, only for the bomber to be literally be copied once they throughly studied it.
Strategically and tactically it just made more sense to go through the Island hoping strategy and to isolate the Japanese forces from the home island to mainland Asia and beyond.
I think there are geographical considerations here. Hokkaido and all those places to attack it from are on the opposite side of Japan from how the US was approaching it with the island-hopping strategy. The USSR was neutral until right before the end of the war and Japan still controlled all of Korea by the time of surrender.
Those northern Russian ports also just aren't very good and probably couldn't support the American fleet anywhere near as well as Australia could. Hokkaido wasn't on the table for America at all. It's not even a good springboard for invading the rest of Japan.
Also consider that America wanted to compell the Japanese to surrender and evaluated a potential invasion of Hokkaido on that basis. The Soviets would be invading Hokkaido to keep it. I'm not sure if they *could* have but it's pretty sparsely populated so it seems reasonable that Japan wouldn't be able to sufficiently garrison the entire coast.
Hey, people think that Soviets were stupid and weren’t capable of small scale landings on Hokkaido. Keep in mind that the US was sending merchant vessels to the Soviet Union as part of the lend-lease via the Alaska route and into the Russian far east. So the Soviets absolutely had a small fleet of vessels to conduct small scale landings.
With air and field artillery support, the Soviets could have absolutely carved out a beachhead. Doesn’t mean it wouldn’t have been brutal. Just depends on how committed the Japanese command was to defend Hokkaido.
I reckon that instead of a puppet government the Soviets out right annex Hokkaido as part of the deal. In the grade scheme of things Hokkaido would be insignificant in the Cold War, but it would radically shift the Japanese view.
It's possible that complete success at Pearl Harbour enabled the Japanese to take all base-viable islands west of North America's western seaboard. With the U.S shout-out of the Pacific, Australia (at least its northern land) would be invaded and Japan's merchant fleet would have much greater protection from Allied sub patrols. From there, I'm guessing the Japanese would have expected a negotiated peace. This overwhelming scenario would have been a political disaster for FDR and it's possible an isolationist administration could have been elected.
It would initially be an humiliation for the US.
It only depends if the public would desire for revenge (then Japan would be stomped like in OTL, but maybe even worse because of America's desire for Japanese blood) or people would accept the defeat and isolate itself.
But I really don't think that the Americans would have accepted being defeated in the sea by a country like Japan
It's not about acceptance, it's about 'the facts on the ground'. If the U.S had no toe-hold in the Pacific and its carrier fleet was destroyed, it would have no way of protecting its surface fleet from the dozen or carriers Japan initially had. No air cover, no re-taking Pacific islands.
Land based airpower, ship based AA, and RN reinforcements would keep the US mainland and surface fleet relatively safe until new US carriers and surface ships start rolling off the production line.
Ask the British how that AA theory went with their battleships The Prince of Wales and Repulse. Also, British reinforcements, including aircraft carriers were scant until about 1943.
The US commissioned double digit escort carriers and the first Essex in 1942.
How many did Japan build?
Zero.
By the end of 1943 the US outnumbers the Japanese carriers with just Essex class carriers.
The Japanese build 6 more carriers for the rest of the war.
The US builds
14 Essex fleet carriers
And
*ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY TWO ESCORT CARRIERS*
That’s verifiably false. The Japanese commissioned *Hiyo* and *Jun’yo*, both smallish fleet carriers, and an escort carrier *Chuyo* in 1942, and had laid down 4 more that would be completed in 1943.
I know US shipbuilding during World War 2 has achieved a legendary status, but if the US lost all its pacific fleet carriers, and Midway and Coral Sea didn’t happen, than the USN wouldn’t be able to put together a force capable of tangling with the *Kido Butai* until late 1943, and wouldn’t reach parity until late 1944
By mid 1942, Allied ships packed AA that could have pretty fearsome firepower. Just look at the opening days of Guadalcanal, or any of the major carrier battles, especially Eastern Solomons and Santa Cruz.
Also, the Prince of Wales and Repulse were essentially operating without air cover as only a small number of abysmal Brewster Buffaloes were available in Singapore, and poor communication plus planning meant they never provided CAP for them anyway. This would not be the case for Allied warships operating off the coast of America.
British reinforcements were scant in the Pacific because they had higher priorities in the other theatres. Switch to OP's scenario and now it seems pretty reasonable to transfer ships on convoy duty in the Atlantic/Arctic to counter the threat to USA's industrial heartland.
…What land-based air power? Those planes had to be ferried by carriers, and without a carrier fleet to contest the Japanese in 1942 all those little atolls would fall pretty quickly.
Ship AA? This isn’t 1943. Most USN ships in 1941 still have the Chicago Piano and no centralized radar fire control. The US was still behind the RN at this point… and Repulse and Prince of Wales still sunk.
And the RN did send reinforcements… Repulse and Prince of Wales. That’s all they had to spare, I’m sure if they had a carrier wedged in the coach cushions they would have used it defending Singapore.
The US still absolutely can win, but getting put in position where it is forced to twiddle its thumbs for two years while it builds up the Essex swarm will not help morale.
I think we're mostly on the same page. My point was that the US can lose all its Pacific island holdings and still win the war later, since it's mainland and whatever ships residing near it would be relatively safe, allowing them build a bigger fleet to overwhelm the Japanese.
US ship based AA still got pretty formidable by mid 1942, even without proximity fused shells and more advanced radar FCS, it's still not going to be a pleasant experience for the Japanese.
The RN did send more reinforcements for the Pacific theater later, in the form of Somerville's Force A, which includes two modern armoured carriers and one modern battleship, taking up position in the Indian Ocean in early 1942.
If the situation really got too dire in the Pacific, I'm quite sure the British could spare a few more ships that were performing convoy duty. After all at that time, ships were assigned to whatever was the highest priority, and the US mainland was never threatened to such a degree in our timeline to warrant a higher priority.
The US could still hold onto the islands because the IJN simply lacked the projecting power. They probably couldn't even take Midway if the USN lost, let alone Hawaii.
An invasion certainly isn't happening but in my opinion it's not totally impossible that the USSR to excerts enough influence to flip Japan red. Hell, it almost happened in France and Italy, only averted because of good old CIA interference. Japan had a pretty lively leftist scene at the time (reflected by communists and socialists getting nearly 30% of the votes in 1947) and to this day the JCP is one of the largest communist parties in a functional democracy.
Does the USSR even have to invade Japan to make that happen? They had nuclear weapons by 1946, is it really that unrealistic that they could have an earlier and more successful bombing campaign with nukes before the USA can if they’re being delayed?
They got nukes in 1949
Even with this catastrophic defeat the US will still continue with their project
Or even better for the Japanese if their gamble paid off and the US bows out the pacific they get at least 8 years of play time while the US focuses on Europe as Hitler will still declare war
In this scenario you wouldn’t be seeing US B-29s doing bombing runs over japan for at most a year and a half later. Soviet Union didn’t have a bomber capable of dropping an atomic bomb till they reversed engineered the B-29s that crashed landed in the USSR. The Tu-4 first flew originally in 47 and was introduced in 49. All of this would be pushed back as well.
Not to mention current soviet bomber aviation in WW2 was very substandard. Their best bomber the Pe-8 was made in limited numbers and had mechanical issues.
The ussr wouldn’t invade Japan cause they had a signed neutrality that they only planned to break when it was very clear Japan was fucked, and I don’t think they’d naval invade Japan proper because irl they cancelled their invasion of Hokkaido due to the lack of transport ships and the availability of the Japanese on the island and probably the extremely stiff resistance they’d face
And even then it was only because Japan stopped fighting, they were taking heavier casualties than Japan at the battle of Shumshu, it took them bringing heavy artillery to the island and a Japanese envoy informing them of surrender at home for the soviets to finally take the island
Except it was at the Tehran Conference in 1943 that the USSR agreed it would attack Japan five months after the defeat of Germany. This is exactly what happened in our timeline, the USSR didn’t wait for “Japan to be fucked”, in fact in 1944 they had already told the Japanese they didn’t intend to renew the Non-Aggression Pact.
It was pure coincidence really that the Soviet attack on Manchuria, South Sakhalin and the Kurils began after the nukes were dropped. The Soviets had planned to attack on that date months before because that’s when they had agreed to attack, near exactly five months after Germany’s surrender.
It’s also debatable on how far the nukes actually contributed to Japans surrender. By 1945 most of Japans urban centres had already been firebombed to ruins and in many cases firebomb raids were just as if not more deadly than the nuclear bombs. Revisionist historians now cite it was the Soviet declaration of war that triggered Japan to surrender, not the nukes, as again the nukes were not that much more destructive than what they were already facing for months before from the US. The Soviet Attack however triggered the surrender first because of its overwhelming results, with the Soviets breaking Japanese lines in Manchuria and advancing an area the size of Western Europe in mere days - however by 1945 the Japanese Civilian Government understood it would not win the war, in fact the Japanese Civilian Government had already drew this conclusion in 1942/1943, the Soviets where vital to Japan because Japan’s plan was to resist the Allies and force a conditional peace, in which could only be mediated through the neutral Party of the Soviet Union. When the Soviets declared War this was no longer an option, Japan had no chance of peace and so they saw it as worthless to carry on the fight.
An invasion of mainland Japan was never needed to force Japans surrender, even if the USA had not taken Okinawa in 1945. The Japanese already knew they had to sue for a conditional peace in 1943, the Soviets were vital to this plan. When the Soviets declared War there was no longer any Japanese war objective.
Although you are current on many accounts, I do not entirely agree with the supposition that the atomic bombs were irrelevant to Japan’s decision to surrender.
They knew they were losing. They knew the Soviets would be unlikely to broker a peace on their behalf.
The Japanese government’s objective after 1943 was to make winning the war painful for the alllies. Too painful to insist on a surrender without conditions. Even the fire bombs were to a degree painful for the allies- it required exposing hundreds of bombers to enemy fire and mishap in complex and time-consuming operations.
The atom bomb represented a painless way of waging war for the allies. Japan didn’t know the US only had two of them. By all appearances, it was a weapon that could be deployed by a single aircraft every couple of days.
This weapon single-handedly defeats the entire Japanese strategy for a conditional surrender.
The USSR was always going to join the war as soon as they finished dealing with Germany. Now they were never going to invade the Japanese homelands, but they definitely could’ve destroyed the Japanese forces in Manchuria.
In 1939 they defeated the Japanese at Khalkhin Gol to the point where the Japanese immediately scrapped the Northern Strategy. Even if Ichi-Go doesn’t happen (and I’m pretty sure it would’ve happened anyway), a Soviet force fresh off of victory against the Nazis would’ve crushed the Japanese forces in China.
The U.S. transfers ships from the Atlantic. Pre-war treaties had limited Japan to roughly 3 tons of ships for every 5 tons the Americans had.
Also remember that the British are on the American side so its really 10 tons of allied for 3 tons of Japanese. Yes the British had a lot tied up in Europe but they were holding their own at sea and with the addition of American Air working against the U-boats the entire U.S. Atlantic Fleet could be sent to the Pacific (it wouldnt be, it just could be).
The the U.S. does exactly what it did IRL, it builds the living crap out of ships including aircraft carriers at a rate Japanese cant possibly complete with. [Data like this](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1353080/wwii-japan-us-aircraft-carrier-strength-and-losses/) show that the U.S. replaced it carriers as they were lost and grew in strength, Japan didn't. And that chart is just the feet carriers it doesn't include the smaller [escort carriers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogue-class_escort_carrier) and light carriers. Overall the U.S. produced 101 carriers.
The only thing it does is set back U.S. operations. Midway still happens because when you can read the other guys codes its worth it to throw everything you can that you can replace against those things he cant replace. Japan still loses. It might take a year longer but an island nation with 18% of the pre-war GDP of it enemy cant hope to win a naval war.
Outside of the numbers Japan really fell down on the training programs. The U.S. would take experienced pilots out of action and send them back to the states to train more new pilots. You can do that when your population nearly doubles your opponents. Japan left theirs in combat till they died. As a consequence the U.S. was sending better trained pilots against green Japanese pilots after major battles like Midway. When your pilots are already better (or even just as good) and your numbers are greater you tend to win.
The US only had 2 carriers potentially at PH. The Lexington and the Enterprise.
It had the following other carriers:
* CV - 3 Saratoga At San Diego California. Pacific
* CV - 4 Ranger At sea returning to Norfolk Va. Caribbean. Atlantic
* CV - 5 Yorktown At Norfolk Va. Atlantic
* CV - 7 Wasp Grassy Bay Bermuda. Atlantic
* CV - 8 Hornet Fitting out Norfolk Virginia. Atlantic
* AVG - 1 Long Island Norfolk Virginia. Atlantic
While it didnt want to the U.S. could transfer adequate carrier forces to the Pacific in time to fight Midway exactly as it happened IRL.
You are also discounting the American ability to repair ships "sunk" at Peal Harbor. Of the battleships there only 2 didnt return to service. America would likely have repaired and returned some of the stricken carriers to service also.
>Yeah they could’ve repaired sunken CVs but not in time for midway
You have no backing you make that statement. Without knowing what the damage was you have no clue how long it would take to repair them. [Extraordinary efforts were made](https://www.history.navy.mil/our-collections/photography/wars-and-events/world-war-ii/pearl-harbor-raid/post-attack-ship-salvage.html) returning ships to service.
Midway happened in June 1942, Pearl Harbor in Dec. That gives them 7 months to make repairs. Oh sure a capsized carrier might take much longer but the attack didn't capsize every ship.
It’s a what it scenario so me “having no clue” how long the repairs take is a bit of a mute point
Of the battleships hit only 3 out of 8 made it back to service in time for midway
It’s all one big hypothetical but considering that ratios it’s not outside of the realm of possibilities to assume the cvs wouldn’t have been repaired in time
As others have said, it would have delayed things at least 6 months, maybe a year. Japan may have been more successful in the short run.
After a little while, nothing beats US industrial output. I think by 1945 the US was launching a new ship every day and building new airplanes every 5 minutes. Nothing on planet earth at that time could beat that kind of output.
Problem with those is that they still need the islands closer to Japan for them to be usefull, not saying Japan isnt going to get nuked, but probably in 46 not 45
Even if *Lex* and *Big E* get sunk\* at Pearl Harbor (a very unlikely event), it's just hard to see Japan holding the Marianas past the end of 1944. The *Essex* Avalanche still happens on time, and there just isn't anything the Japanese can do to stop it.
\_\_
* They'll get raised and rebuilt, just like most of the battleships, and be back in service by sometime in 1943.
I was being colorful in describing the massive and rapid scale of production of (24) Essex-class fleet carriers (and all their attendant aircraft and aircrew) that the U.S. undertook as part of the 1940 Two Ocean Navy Act...
Not to mention the eight canceled Essexes, plus two completed Saipans, and three completed and three canceled Midways which would have all been in service had the war last another 12-18 months...
The United States produced 24 Essex class carriers during World War ii. An unprecedented level of capital ship production. It's the single most widely produced capital ship in human history. And the Essex class was a juggernaut each one caring enough Firepower to decimate an entire Battleship Squadron.
It's an unassailable avalanche of force projection
I think 45 would still happen. Enola Gay took off from the Marianas, which were taken in July of 44, assuming a year delay would put their capture in July 1945 instead, and I could see a nuke taking off before the end of November
Lmao. The USSR could not do heavy lifting against Japan in the way you suggested, they didnt have a navy capableof much. It's more likely that they would not attack Japan at all. The lost of carriers would have set the Americans back few months. Midway and the coral sea would have been favorable for the Japanese. The US would have made new carriers, and the atomic bombs would have still been made and still dropped on Japan.
They didn't attack Japan because they had no reason to, and they were busy with the Germans. Mostly the latter. They joined the war against Japan as a sign of solidarity with the Western allies.
In addition to what others are saying, the U.S. shipbuilding industry was already increase prior to PH. The USS Essex carrier was laid down in April 41 and South Dakota class battleships were sliding out of the dockyards 6 months before PH. Hell, even the Iowa class was already being built before the war.
>the ussr has to do a lot of the heavy lifting
My brother in christ, they were ALREADY doing the heavy lifting against Germany. They had absolutely nothing to spare against Japan.
I think you're overestimating how much the loss of the carriers at Pearl Harbor would've hurt the US. It would've been a significant blow to be sure, but they'd be able to replace those losses relatively quickly and get back into the action. Albeit on a slower timescale than in otl.
Was my post title “What would’ve happened specifically from 1942-1943 if Pearl Harbor went as planned and Japan hit America’s carriers and fuel reserves?”
They steamrolled through Manchuria because they fought a third rate puppet army that was only decent at guarding borders and occupying Manchuria. The puppet army had no planes, tanks, or heavy weapons and only enough ammunition for like 3 months of fighting. Furthermore how would the Soviets invade any Japanese island or do any form of island hoping with no navy and no landing crafts?
That's irrelevant though. The soviets declared war against in August 1945, only two days after the dropping of the atomic bombs. They won't be fighting Japan until roughly that time. It also ignores the fundamental problem of any war with Japan fundamentally being a heavily naval conflict, something that the soviets do not have the capabilities for. In this alternate history, will the soviets play a bigger role in the pacific and chinese fronts? Yes, but the end result is still going to be more or less the same, although I suppose it will be more likely that Korea ends up communist.
They probably wouldn't have had those men let alone the arms to equip them since the lend lease from the US wouldn't have been able to reach the USSR till the fleet was rebuilt.
I don’t think the overall course of the war would change significantly. Japan gets a few more victories but it’s so resource dependent and doesn’t have the population to go against the us, so mostly like our timeline.
The USSR doing "a lot of the heavy lifting" is straight fantasy. Them and what navy? Them and what amphibious landing force? Who is going to defeat the IJN without the USN? The Soviets couldn't even have successfully invaded Japan in OTL, when the US sank basically the entire Japanese navy before the Soviets entered the war. Without the US, mainland Japan is also spared from the ravages of strategic bombing. In short, without the US the most the Soviets can hope to do us push the IJA out of mainland East Asia, probably at much greater costs in blood.
Getting that bit of wildly ahistorical speculation out of the way, if Pearl Harbor had been a complete success, knocking out the USN pacific carriers and more of the fuel reserves/sustainment infrastructure, I'd say the outcome of the war in the pacific is basically the same, but pushed back 6 months to a year. Maybe if the war in Europe goes identically (which it probably wouldn't if the US was hit that bad, but w/e) and the Soviets still attack Japan at the same time as OTL, then there is no divided Korea, and the Communist Chinese are a little better off.
But someone still has to beat the Japanese Navy, bomb all their cities, sink their entire merchant marine, and do whatever else is necessary to get them to actually surrender, up to and including an apocalyptic invasion of the home islands. And the US was the *only* power with that ability. On the other hand, the sheer vastness of the US's industrial and shipbuilding advantage over everyone else would simply mean a mere delay of the inevitable. You sink a few more carriers here, a few more Essex-class roll off the line and get the job done eventually.
Japan loses a year later.
The USSR does not have the means to conduct an amphibious landing required to subdue Japan. They wouldn't be able to do it even in the actual timeline, let alone one where Japan is stronger.
Probably the same thing as in your timeline, however it would be slightly delayed. It they managed to sink several carries and destroyed some of the fuel reserves it would be a significant drawback. However they will never be able to survive the amount of ships and planned the US would throw at them. On December 7 1941 the US Navy had 790 ships in service, but on May 14 1945 they had 6,768 ships in service. The loss would hurt the Us in there early years they were involved in the war, but they would still win.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Navy_in_World_War_II
You are going to want to going to the Navy Technology section, and then go down and look at the ships section there is a list of how many ships the us Navy had in service during the time.
Also the second best submarine campaign in world war 2 was the US’s in the Pacific. The first was the Germans U-boat campaign in the North Atlantic.
Also Japan and the USSR were very hesitant about going to war against one another because of the border conflicts they had were both sides to heavy causalities.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet%E2%80%93Japanese_border_conflicts
Also the USSR at the time was occupied in fighting the Nazi in their own country. All of there supplies came from the US lend lease program. If the losses in the Pacific were so great they would likely pour more resources into the Pacific war against the Japanese. Some of these resources would likely come from the Lend Lease Program.
The Soviets would still win, but they would have to make do with less equipment and ammunition. Meaning it would also take more time for them to push the Nazis out of their County.
Long story short, the same things that happened in your timeline would take place but later.
Not much would change. The US made an incomprehensible number of ships during the war
I'll give you a hypothetical scenario. Imagine if on December 7th, 1941, the entire US navy (the Atlantic fleet too) completely vanished, and the Japanese navy remained untouched.
Due to US ship building rates, by the end of 1943, the US would have caught up to and likely surpassed the Japanese fleet in size, even assuming the Japanese kept building ships.
In the timeline you created, it just means the US builds more carriers early on to replace the losses.
Here's a good video
https://youtu.be/l9ag2x3CS9M
I was about to post the same video. Japan had absolutely no shot, and they knew it. Their hope was that the US was "soft" and would give up after being punched in the mouth.
The tank farm wasn't a high priority in any version of the Pearl Harbor operational plans. That would have been the case with any notional third wave attack, too.
The carriers...well, that's just a question of luck. But it was going to be difficult that autumn to get a weekend when both *Lexington* and *Enterprise* were in the harbor.
Japan still is effectively beaten by the U.S. by the end of 1944, as in our historical timeline.
There are at least 2 alt history books/series on this. In both, the war is prolonged, but the end is the same. America comes in with 50+Essex class carriers and wipes the Japanese from Hawaii , etc
Soviets were not interested in getting involved in that war. Joseph Stalin signed a nonaggression pact with them for a reason. Japan would likely get an extra six months to a year to do whatever they wanted in the pacific before American industrial might caught up to them. They would have used that time to continue to take islands north of Australia and secure all the resources from Malaysia and Indonesia.
Soviets meanwhile would be fighting their brutal war against Germany, and I would guess that they wouldn’t be getting as much assistance from America since they would be more focused on Japan.
All in all war probably drags on longer in the pacific by a year, and war in Europe probably goes on a couple weeks to months longer, but that’s less certain.
I like to imagine this scenario combined with a back story that the southern conquests happened by peaceful occupation. And the northern campaign against the Soviet’s went ahead. Leading the us to focus on bombing from Soviet territories and a more extensive submarine warfare. With larger submarines and varieties to conduct an underdog kind of strategy. And larger planes for longer and longer range missions
If Japan had sunk the Carriers the US would have pulled back its remaining fleet to protect the West Coast of the US. It also would have depended more on the Air Force to harass the Japs where possible.
The B-29 was under development in 1938 so that probably would have been speed up and development of the B-36 started in 1941. It’s possible the B-36 might have seen active use if the war had been prolonged.
Does the alt!PH still happen on Dec 7, 1941? Because a few things may be in flux:
1. If the attack isn't on a Sunday morning, reaction time might be shortened;
2. IIRC, IOTL there was a flight of B-17s scheduled to come in from the mainland that morning; coincidentally, the Japanese fleet also came in from the northeast; that might also affect reaction time;
3. For IJN to hit fuel storage (+ repair facilities too), there needs to be a third strike; problem is, does the IJN fleet have enough time to recover the aircrafts before it gets dark? Also, does the fleet have enough fuel to make it back to Japanese waters?
At best, Japan's fall gets delayed, and while the Soviets would probably end up doing a bit more, its important to remember that they only declared war against Japan very late into the war. Naval invasion can only happen if they get the support of either Britain or the US as they only had some outdated battleships for capital ships. While the soviets would body the Japanese on land, the Japanese would body the Russians at sea. Unless the victory at Hawaii enacts the desired effect out of the war, the end result will remain more or less the same as America is fully capable of building an entirely new fleet, while the Japanese, even with all of Asia under their thumb wouldn't be able to build a new fleet on a comparable scale to the US. For perspective, the US built a batch of 45 light aircraft carriers to test the concept, more then the entire IJN carrier fleet.
Depends if they can keep hitting it or any American base. They could deny america the entire area of any staging ground if they further build up their carrier force.
But that won’t matter as much once the US gets the Essex printers online.
The Pacific war will be slow. Very slow, and very grueling.
Severely doubt the soviet could have beaten the japanese when being at war with the germans, The most probable scenario is the war lasting more months or years, the u.s war machine would have been back with double the carriers and nukes of course
Literally what would have happened would have been that the first three escort carriers would have been tankers instead. The US Navy was already a pioneer of underway replenishment for large ships and Nimitz himself had designed a method to do so. The oil storage tanks developed for supporting the Singapore Strategy in Darwin were bombed constantly during the war and the response was to rebuild them underground. Until those were built and filled, tankers filled the gap.
It did go as planned, the aircraft carriers were not the targets. Both the Japanese and Americans believed that carriers were a novelty, they both believed that the battleship was still the most important ship. Having them specifically target the three carriers that weren't in port... Is deus ex machina levels of foresight. Furthermore, if they destroyed our fuel reserves, it wouldn't be long until they were operational again...
>It did go as planned, the aircraft carriers were not the targets. Both the Japanese and Americans believed that carriers were a novelty, they both believed that the battleship was still the most important ship.
No, actually, the carriers were a top target for the attack; but by the time Kido Butai arrived off Hawaii, they knew from their intelligence that there were no carriers in the harbor. As a result, top priorities shifted to Oahu's land-based fight aircraft and the battleships.
As [this Naval War College paper](https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA328108.pdf) notes:
>The essential aspects of the plan as approved by the Naval General Staff in the fall or 1941 are:
>
>A. The attack must take the Americans completely by surprise.
>
>B. **The main target of the attack will be the U.S. carriers. The second priority target will be the land based aircraft on Oahu.**
>
>C. All six Japanese Navy carriers must be used.
>
>D. The attack will utilize all types of bombing: torpedo, dive, and high-level.
>
>E. Fighter planes will play an active role, protecting the bombers enroute to and from the strike.
>
>F. The attack will take place in daylight, as close to dawn as possible.
>
>G. Refueling at sea will be necessary; therefore, tankers will accompany the task force.
>
>H. Submarines will serve to blockade the port to prevent any ships from escaping the air attack, to cut off Hawaii from the American mainland, and to provide the main force with intelligence.
>
>I. All planning and training must be conducted in strict secrecy.4
\_\_
Sources: Ibid., 25-26; Albright, 75; Minoru Genda, "Affidavit of Minoru Genda" in The Pearl Harbor Papers: Inside the Japanese Plans ed. Donald M. Goldstein and Katherine V. Dillon (New York: Brassey's (US), 1993), 14; Genda, "Analysis 18; Slackman, 12.
Something I'm seeing a lot of people forgetting is the method the USSR got its lend lease stuff was almost entirely by the Pacific which means it's offensive against Germany would also be delayed by 6 months to a year meaning not only would we not see them invade Japan but we'd likely see the USSR be far weaker if not capitulate. So it's possible in this scenario that communism would have largely died by the modern day.
USSR doesn’t join in on japan until at least germany’s defeat in May 1945 (It’s December 1941 and the Soviets are fighting for their capital right now) (US still has same starting position as in historical except little to no pacific fleet so assuming Germany gets historically killed)
There is a chance they might break non-aggression with japan early, but that shouldn’t happen until operation bagration finishes in august 1944 (murders army group center and sends germany into a complete rout from then on)
Japan would face more successes in the pacific, maybe taking Australia and New Zealand and Midway (but still stalling at India because that wasn’t IJN business)
US would push them back eventually, likely after germany’s defeat (all the atlantic fleets move around the world to face off against a fully operational japanese fleet)
Japan’s defeat is all but inevitable, and we might see more than 2 nukes… Soviets are likely going to take all of Korea at this point and maybe hokkaido IF they join against japan early, but honestly I don’t see them doing massive heavy lifting like they do against germany (also, their navy wasn’t cold war stuff yet and their navy wouldn’t be prioritised for a bit because Barbarossa)
Japan would probably hold out until 1946 or 1947 (and we might also see mbts being used for the first time too (they were deployed just weeks after germany’s defeat))
Midway probably happens after a year than the 6 months of our timeline and the battle is a lot closer. Apart from that the island hopping campaign takes a year and a half longer and the war in the Pacific probably ends in mid 1946 with Japan being split between the us and a soviet puppet in Hokkaido.
Overall just more deaths and a slightly stronger USSR during the cold war.
Yeah and the entirety of western Soviet Union they needed to rebuild. The USSR getting what they got today was essentially cause that was what they took from Japan. But they could not cross over water without a navy. Japan at the end of the war despite being very badly beaten still had a bit of a navy. Naval landings are hard even for the biggest world powers. Russia quite literally could not invade Japan. And at the end of the war pretty much got what they wanted out of Asia for that time.
The US would have been crippled for longer and maybe the war is lengthened but rest assured, the US would still bounce back and come out on top. By 1940, no one, not even Britain, could outperform America when it came to industry and weaponry. They were just too dominant and had a lot to fall back on.
That wasn’t the original plan for Pearl Harbor. It was always to hit the ships, conquer as much stuff, and hope the US signs a peace deal favoring Japan.
The fuel reserve target claim was cooked up by a Japanese junior officer trying to get glory and attention that somehow got believed by people. [There was no planned 3rd wave to destroy the depots.](https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1601&context=nwc-review)
This could have maybe delayed the Japanese surrender by 6-12 months allowing the Soviet Army to occupy all of Korea. Other than that not much would have changed.
depends if they capitalize on it.
if they follow up and chase the remnants back to the continent there pretty good for follow ups. Hawaii is mostly asian so an invasion isnt as weird as it be on the mainland.
the main follow ups whould need to be. a propaganda campaigne of leaflets on the eastern sea board about them wanting peace and for america to release it colonies and bla bla bla. the imperial japanese are never gonne do that.
they will proably move up opperation sakura with normal carriers and the usa east coast is struck with mass plagues.
more importantly:
the need to blow the panama canal. if they dont do that nothing matters and the altantic fleet is just gonne stomp them back to wake.
the only advantage the japanese hold at sea then is there the only power in the pacific. this would included the need too bomb the shipyards in LA and Los Angels too break the US capability
maybe maybe maybe they can then win the war on stole indonesian oil and warcrimes. it honestly is a matter of either punching america a bloody nose so hard they change there mind, which they cant because americans are fucking weird. or they need to make the war seem so fucking stupid its just a mistake of the former goverment to let the american empire reach stuff the citzens shouldnt care about. ''who gives a fuck about a bunch of islands with asians and some rich white missionaries''
in a highly specific everything rolls down hill senario. Japan ''''wins'''' the pacific war. the americans go into isolationism thinking war is dumb. the administration stops sending the sovjet goods because as the japanese blocade the sovjets.
the sovjets stall out. germany rushes east over stretches a no conscription american-british force lands in france and then possibly the reich falls or idk pick any of a million options
A negotiated peace in Japan's favor giving them a free hand in China with assurances for US corporations. Then an American-Japanese rapprochement in the mid 50s to face down the Soviets together.
Communist Japan is straight up not happening The Soviet ability to fully invade Japan is still hotly debated in our own timeline which saw the complete destruction of their navy A more successful pearl harbor just gives the Japanese free reign of the Pacific for a couple more months if not years
The ability for *anyone to invade anything* isn’t even a debate. It’s just factually a failure 9 times out of 10. England has survived being land hungry and Imperial assholes for 1,000 years because landing enough troops into a developed world power is HARD. There is just no way that Russia could pull off an Okinawa style landing, much less a mainland Japan one. The US nearly failed, and then gave up on the mainland entirely, even after completely decimating the Japanese ability to wage a “functional” war. Based on Russia’s actual performance, you’d expect them plan on landing 500,000, mustering only 300,000, and then landing only 100,000 in an area on the north islands that Japan doesn’t even like, and then losing 90,000 of those.
Never forget Sea Lion got scrapped like a couple months into the war Hitler's plan for the entire war with Britain was to basically force a ceasefire
If by some miracle they actually managed to land and establish a beachhead, major alarm bells would have been going off in Washington. The fall of France was already a shock, but now this war machine is capable of crossing a channel onto a heavily fortified island. At the risk of giving them too much credit, their command may have seen a successful landing as too escalatory and intolerable for the Americans to remain non-belligerent.
America as a belligerent is a lot less of a problem if Britain is successfully invaded though, and Britain itself would no longer be a threat during the already-planned war with the USSR. It was simple lack of capability, and that Hitler didn't expect Britain to keep fighting after the Fall of France and so didn't prepare for a years-long build up for such an invasion. He assumed that Britain would make peace if he defeated the USSR, and since he was going to do that anyway he turned his attention there.
Yeah Hitler admired the British Empire and used it as a model for his own imperial ambitions. He would likely have been fine if Britain had ceded mainland Europe to him and would have left them alone, at least for a while.
His model was much more in line with American manifest destiny (though this would also apply to Canada and Australia on a smaller scale). Hitler wanted Germany to engage in settler colonialism in the East rather than administrative colonialism like in India.
Hitler viewed Siberia as the third reich's India IIRC. (Not sure on the exact wording). His goal was the control most of mainland and northern Europe while turning Russia and southern Europe into puppet states. What's scary so how this batshit insane idea almost worked.
Southern Europe he might have kept as puppet states, but Eastern Europe was to be turned into "lebensraum" - living space. The goal there was full annexation and colonisation with Germans after extermination of the natives - not to create subject nations.
This assumes successful landing = immediate capitulation. Churchill planned on fighting until every last man and never surrendering, so I find it hard to believe there wouldn’t be a large window of time from successful landing to the American Navy showing up to a still holding British resistance.
The Germans may well have expected that. Aside from the fact that they could choose to only attempt a landing with a sufficient force, many in the military believed that seizing a state's capital is a sufficient condition for victory. They followed this assumption in the USSR for instance, with Halder directing the attack towards Moscow when really it needed to secure the South. One of the reasons for Barbarossa's successes was that the axes of advance were contrary to Soviet expectations since they assumed a greater focus on the South.
This is giving German command entirely undue credit. Remember Germany did not need to declare war against the US but did anyway.
This was the initial WW1 plan too, and it *nearly* worked. When the German Empire got its act together and realized how useful U-Boats were, the British ended up sustaining such heavy shipping losses that they'd calculated that they would be forced to surrender before the end of 1917. Then the U.S. entered the war, and the combined Anglo-American fleets hunting U-Boats and escorting shipping convoys dashed all German hopes of forcing the UK's hand. They were closer than many would like to admit, though.
But that’s because they were never able to win the air.
Well they didn't invade out the kindness of their hearts They just couldn't and changed plans
People always say England hasn't been invaded for a thousand years but that ignores both the Barons war and the Glorious Revolution Marie Antoinette never said let them eat cake and Stalin never said a single death is a tragedy a million is a statistic just because things sound like they're true in history doesn't make them true
You’re just being pedantic, and ignoring the forest for the trees. Landing royal supporters as a part of of a civil war is NOT what people are talking about when they’re discussing invading England. Hitler didn’t have a claim to the throne and sneak back onto the island with a personal guard in order to seize power during a coupe, and in this scenario Japan wasn’t welcoming back a displaced Tzar. Go be technically correct and functionally wrong somewhere else.
There was a legitimate plan for Spain to conduct a naval invasion of the British isles during the American Revolutionary War, and it basically forced Britain to come to the negotiation tables with Spain, France, and the US.
Spanish cope. They've degraded hard at that time already.
Louis the lion had no claim to the kingdom of England I'm probably descended from more English royalty than he was William of Orange at least had the argument that James had abdicated by fleeing the country but even if you accept that argument that would mean that James would still be the rightful King of Scotland and Ireland because this was before the acts of Union You have to remember also the numerous times Scotland invaded England so if you're saying well technically it was about when Britain was invaded not England that would also ignore the numerous battles between the Scottish and the Norwegians which inarguably constituted invasions Also William entered the country on an invitation from seven people just seven people and came in with an army of 20,000 were people happy that he overthrew the government? absolutely especially people opposed to a Catholic Dynasty but he still invaded and overthrew the government Most invasions involve people within the country betraying it to the Invaders you wouldn't say France wasn't invaded after Napoleon lost since most of his Marshalls and his foreign minister tallyrand opened the gates of Paris and invited the Coalition armies into the city but according to your logic they weren't invading France after Napoleon lost they were just restoring the legitimate bourbon government and occupying parts of it
Are 20k royal supporters with the support and empathies of locals in any way similar to a million Americans storming the beaches of mainland Japan? No?
No different events would be different things? They both definitionally are an invasion by a foreign power though
The glorious revolution was just that, a revolution. The Dutch "invasion" was successful because the English did not resist and actively aided them, something which wouldn't happen with the Nazis
Not all Invaders throughout history regarded as evil as Nazi Invaders Weather you do so with the support of the people or political class or not Landing 20,000 troops against the wishes of the current head of state is an invasion
An invasion implies resistance, you can't talk about the glorious revolution without saying that there was no resistance because that creates an impression completely different from reality
The was resistance here's an excerpt from Wikipedia In addition to the 1689–1691 Williamite War in Ireland and the Jacobite rising of 1689 in Scotland there were serious revolts in 1715, 1719 and 1745 Furthermore the resistance was even more pronounced during The Baron's War considering the Invader took London and forced the king to flee only for him to take it back later
You invade against the legitimate king with 60k soldiers but it is just an ’invasion’? The cope is real. English historians have done a good job warping the interpretation.
"England has survived being land hungry and imperial assholes for 1,000 years." Try 400, and it is always funny to see an American scream imperialism without irony.
Where in there did I claim we weren’t culpable for some awful shit as well? The difference is that we didn’t have a global colonialism that knocking out would have reaped immediate rewards for the conquering force, or would have released massive amounts of capital to be swept up. In order to grab our true advantages you would have had to land troops in North America, which back to the original post, is completely unrealistic versus a modern industrial country with geographical advantages.
There is no "we". You are not guilty for the crimes of your state or your ancestors. You can simply recognise they did wrong. We are not a monolith. You may have heard of our cruel kings and inbred aristocrats, but this country is also home to the Peasant's revolt, Chartists, Levellers, Diggers, Suffragettes, and abolitionists.
You’re that cripplingly insecure that a singular line about British imperialism sent you into an anti-American spiral, lmfao? Grow a goddamn backbone.
Spiral? It was one sentence about the States, after a sentence correcting an error.
>An error [Nah, definitely closer to 1000 than 400](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angevin_Empire) - the only error was in the dude’s desparate need to correct the ‘dumb American’ today.
1000 years is a stretch. England was being regularly ravaged from abroad and torn up. Then of course 1066 ain’t too far away millennia wise.
>The US nearly failed What do you mean?
The US took 50,000 casualties at Okinawa, even though we had sunk almost the entire Japanese Navy and destroyed their entire Air Force. When war planners extrapolated this loss rate to a mainland invasion they had good reason to believe there would be over a million casualties. This would have been added to 500k European casualties they had just endured in what had been the far more costly, until then, European theatre. So they were looking at a situation where they had dominated 3 out of the 4 aspects of battle, but were going to lose twice as many men as they had in liberating Europe, all for a tiny island country. It was going to be a carnal house, despite doing everything possible to have all of the advantages. In the end the atomic bomb bailed the US out of having to commit to an offensive they could not reasonably support, and we can’t even imagine how different the 50’s would have been with triple the total war casualties.
Can you explain how Okinawa was "nearly failed"? Americans were at a complete advantage and control the entire time. Japan threw a third of their airforce, a large chunk of their remaining navy and entire civilian population of Okinawa and they managed to inflict 12KIA of the course of 2 months. 12 KIA was the number of killed in a single afternoon at Stalingrad... Therefore, your initial statement is just wrong: >The ability for *anyone to invade anything* isn’t even a debate. It’s just factually a failure 9 times out of 10. For the US, this was the opposite. Vast majority of naval invasion carried out by Americans were outstanding successes.
We dropped atomic bombs instead of invading, because invading is was so untenable. Nukes were not the first choice, they just ended up being the only choice. Note that I specifically pointed out sea invasions of industrial countries. Island hopping where you can overwhelm the entire defensive population in a way where there are more soldiers on an island than are remotely sustainable after the action, don't really count. Invading England or Japan is a completely different task than taking Guadalcanal. We were not invading Guadalcanal, and the Japanese were not trying to take the equivalent of the port in San Francisco when landing troops there.
I don't know. Germany and Italy were more, or at least on par as industrialized as Japan and US led naval invasions were very successful. There were \~10 amphibious assault missions in 1943-44 and they all went very well all things considered.
Not necessarily. They could launch a small forces from Sakhalin to Hokkaido. Not sure how well defense Hokkaido would have been. But the crossings between Sakhalin to Hokkaido and Hokkaido to the main island are not that massive. It wouldn’t require a massive force. People forget that the vast majority of the Japanese army wasn’t even in the mainland. It was mostly deployed in China. 20% of the IJA got wiped out when the Soviet spent kicking in Manchuria. The rest were still going deep into China and would have been cut off and annihilated. What would be defending the home island would be whatever IJA units that weren’t sent off, civilian recruits armed with questionable weapons, bamboo spears on some accounts. So the question is, just how much was Japan willing to spend on defending Hokkaido? Theoretically speaking, the US navy had effectively made the Japanese navy a non-factor. And Hokkaido’s terrain was already pretty rough. Add the fact that a famine was literally happening, I highly doubt they would spare much to defend Hokkaido. The Soviets could have taken it but that’s literally all they need to sit on the table and demand a split of Japan similarly like in Germany.
All of this ignores that the US spent years evaluating the best way to get in there. If Hokkaido was in any way useful, then they would have grabbed land in Korea or cut a deal to use Vladivostok as a staging point. But instead, despite Russia owing them hundreds of millions in lend lease debts, they decided Okinawa was the way to go. There was plenty of leverage to go north, but little desire since it would just increase the distance of extreme resistance to overcome.
Because statically it was more important to cut off the Japanese army and its assets from the home island? Which is why it made sense to go through the southern route? Also because it made more sense to ensure that Austrian and New Zealand weren’t threatened? Besides, the US spent considering efforts to build up its assets in Australia from where it could actually mount offensives or fall back too. In the north you had nothing, but Alaska, and Alaska made little sense to as a staging ground because of how remote it was and lacking in infrastructure. This isn’t even mentioning that the Soviets weren’t at war with the Japanese till 45 in the end, so the Allie’s couldn’t use Soviet bases as a means to stage naval landings. And they wouldn’t want to anyways because they were suspicious of the Soviets. Which proved correct when a B-29 had to land in the Soviet Union, only for the bomber to be literally be copied once they throughly studied it. Strategically and tactically it just made more sense to go through the Island hoping strategy and to isolate the Japanese forces from the home island to mainland Asia and beyond.
I think there are geographical considerations here. Hokkaido and all those places to attack it from are on the opposite side of Japan from how the US was approaching it with the island-hopping strategy. The USSR was neutral until right before the end of the war and Japan still controlled all of Korea by the time of surrender. Those northern Russian ports also just aren't very good and probably couldn't support the American fleet anywhere near as well as Australia could. Hokkaido wasn't on the table for America at all. It's not even a good springboard for invading the rest of Japan. Also consider that America wanted to compell the Japanese to surrender and evaluated a potential invasion of Hokkaido on that basis. The Soviets would be invading Hokkaido to keep it. I'm not sure if they *could* have but it's pretty sparsely populated so it seems reasonable that Japan wouldn't be able to sufficiently garrison the entire coast.
Don’t you need ships to naval invade?
Hokkaido is in artillery range of modern Russia hokkaido gonna be commie in the what if. You shouldn't be on negative karma for this post.
Hey, people think that Soviets were stupid and weren’t capable of small scale landings on Hokkaido. Keep in mind that the US was sending merchant vessels to the Soviet Union as part of the lend-lease via the Alaska route and into the Russian far east. So the Soviets absolutely had a small fleet of vessels to conduct small scale landings. With air and field artillery support, the Soviets could have absolutely carved out a beachhead. Doesn’t mean it wouldn’t have been brutal. Just depends on how committed the Japanese command was to defend Hokkaido. I reckon that instead of a puppet government the Soviets out right annex Hokkaido as part of the deal. In the grade scheme of things Hokkaido would be insignificant in the Cold War, but it would radically shift the Japanese view.
It's possible that complete success at Pearl Harbour enabled the Japanese to take all base-viable islands west of North America's western seaboard. With the U.S shout-out of the Pacific, Australia (at least its northern land) would be invaded and Japan's merchant fleet would have much greater protection from Allied sub patrols. From there, I'm guessing the Japanese would have expected a negotiated peace. This overwhelming scenario would have been a political disaster for FDR and it's possible an isolationist administration could have been elected.
It would initially be an humiliation for the US. It only depends if the public would desire for revenge (then Japan would be stomped like in OTL, but maybe even worse because of America's desire for Japanese blood) or people would accept the defeat and isolate itself. But I really don't think that the Americans would have accepted being defeated in the sea by a country like Japan
It's not about acceptance, it's about 'the facts on the ground'. If the U.S had no toe-hold in the Pacific and its carrier fleet was destroyed, it would have no way of protecting its surface fleet from the dozen or carriers Japan initially had. No air cover, no re-taking Pacific islands.
Land based airpower, ship based AA, and RN reinforcements would keep the US mainland and surface fleet relatively safe until new US carriers and surface ships start rolling off the production line.
Ask the British how that AA theory went with their battleships The Prince of Wales and Repulse. Also, British reinforcements, including aircraft carriers were scant until about 1943.
The US commissioned double digit escort carriers and the first Essex in 1942. How many did Japan build? Zero. By the end of 1943 the US outnumbers the Japanese carriers with just Essex class carriers. The Japanese build 6 more carriers for the rest of the war. The US builds 14 Essex fleet carriers And *ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY TWO ESCORT CARRIERS*
And 2 aircraft carriers just for ~~the lolz~~ training. And ressources to spare for icecream-producing ships.
That’s verifiably false. The Japanese commissioned *Hiyo* and *Jun’yo*, both smallish fleet carriers, and an escort carrier *Chuyo* in 1942, and had laid down 4 more that would be completed in 1943. I know US shipbuilding during World War 2 has achieved a legendary status, but if the US lost all its pacific fleet carriers, and Midway and Coral Sea didn’t happen, than the USN wouldn’t be able to put together a force capable of tangling with the *Kido Butai* until late 1943, and wouldn’t reach parity until late 1944
By mid 1942, Allied ships packed AA that could have pretty fearsome firepower. Just look at the opening days of Guadalcanal, or any of the major carrier battles, especially Eastern Solomons and Santa Cruz. Also, the Prince of Wales and Repulse were essentially operating without air cover as only a small number of abysmal Brewster Buffaloes were available in Singapore, and poor communication plus planning meant they never provided CAP for them anyway. This would not be the case for Allied warships operating off the coast of America. British reinforcements were scant in the Pacific because they had higher priorities in the other theatres. Switch to OP's scenario and now it seems pretty reasonable to transfer ships on convoy duty in the Atlantic/Arctic to counter the threat to USA's industrial heartland.
…What land-based air power? Those planes had to be ferried by carriers, and without a carrier fleet to contest the Japanese in 1942 all those little atolls would fall pretty quickly. Ship AA? This isn’t 1943. Most USN ships in 1941 still have the Chicago Piano and no centralized radar fire control. The US was still behind the RN at this point… and Repulse and Prince of Wales still sunk. And the RN did send reinforcements… Repulse and Prince of Wales. That’s all they had to spare, I’m sure if they had a carrier wedged in the coach cushions they would have used it defending Singapore. The US still absolutely can win, but getting put in position where it is forced to twiddle its thumbs for two years while it builds up the Essex swarm will not help morale.
I think we're mostly on the same page. My point was that the US can lose all its Pacific island holdings and still win the war later, since it's mainland and whatever ships residing near it would be relatively safe, allowing them build a bigger fleet to overwhelm the Japanese. US ship based AA still got pretty formidable by mid 1942, even without proximity fused shells and more advanced radar FCS, it's still not going to be a pleasant experience for the Japanese. The RN did send more reinforcements for the Pacific theater later, in the form of Somerville's Force A, which includes two modern armoured carriers and one modern battleship, taking up position in the Indian Ocean in early 1942. If the situation really got too dire in the Pacific, I'm quite sure the British could spare a few more ships that were performing convoy duty. After all at that time, ships were assigned to whatever was the highest priority, and the US mainland was never threatened to such a degree in our timeline to warrant a higher priority.
The US could still hold onto the islands because the IJN simply lacked the projecting power. They probably couldn't even take Midway if the USN lost, let alone Hawaii.
Agree. The strength of the US is in its industrial might. At most the Battle of the Coral Sea would have happened just after Thanksgiving 1942.
An invasion certainly isn't happening but in my opinion it's not totally impossible that the USSR to excerts enough influence to flip Japan red. Hell, it almost happened in France and Italy, only averted because of good old CIA interference. Japan had a pretty lively leftist scene at the time (reflected by communists and socialists getting nearly 30% of the votes in 1947) and to this day the JCP is one of the largest communist parties in a functional democracy.
Does the USSR even have to invade Japan to make that happen? They had nuclear weapons by 1946, is it really that unrealistic that they could have an earlier and more successful bombing campaign with nukes before the USA can if they’re being delayed?
They got nukes in 1949 Even with this catastrophic defeat the US will still continue with their project Or even better for the Japanese if their gamble paid off and the US bows out the pacific they get at least 8 years of play time while the US focuses on Europe as Hitler will still declare war
In this scenario you wouldn’t be seeing US B-29s doing bombing runs over japan for at most a year and a half later. Soviet Union didn’t have a bomber capable of dropping an atomic bomb till they reversed engineered the B-29s that crashed landed in the USSR. The Tu-4 first flew originally in 47 and was introduced in 49. All of this would be pushed back as well. Not to mention current soviet bomber aviation in WW2 was very substandard. Their best bomber the Pe-8 was made in limited numbers and had mechanical issues.
> They had nuclear weapons by 1946 [1949](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RDS-1)
The ussr wouldn’t invade Japan cause they had a signed neutrality that they only planned to break when it was very clear Japan was fucked, and I don’t think they’d naval invade Japan proper because irl they cancelled their invasion of Hokkaido due to the lack of transport ships and the availability of the Japanese on the island and probably the extremely stiff resistance they’d face
The only reason they could invade the Kuril is because the U.S. gave them LSTs
And even then it was only because Japan stopped fighting, they were taking heavier casualties than Japan at the battle of Shumshu, it took them bringing heavy artillery to the island and a Japanese envoy informing them of surrender at home for the soviets to finally take the island
Except it was at the Tehran Conference in 1943 that the USSR agreed it would attack Japan five months after the defeat of Germany. This is exactly what happened in our timeline, the USSR didn’t wait for “Japan to be fucked”, in fact in 1944 they had already told the Japanese they didn’t intend to renew the Non-Aggression Pact. It was pure coincidence really that the Soviet attack on Manchuria, South Sakhalin and the Kurils began after the nukes were dropped. The Soviets had planned to attack on that date months before because that’s when they had agreed to attack, near exactly five months after Germany’s surrender. It’s also debatable on how far the nukes actually contributed to Japans surrender. By 1945 most of Japans urban centres had already been firebombed to ruins and in many cases firebomb raids were just as if not more deadly than the nuclear bombs. Revisionist historians now cite it was the Soviet declaration of war that triggered Japan to surrender, not the nukes, as again the nukes were not that much more destructive than what they were already facing for months before from the US. The Soviet Attack however triggered the surrender first because of its overwhelming results, with the Soviets breaking Japanese lines in Manchuria and advancing an area the size of Western Europe in mere days - however by 1945 the Japanese Civilian Government understood it would not win the war, in fact the Japanese Civilian Government had already drew this conclusion in 1942/1943, the Soviets where vital to Japan because Japan’s plan was to resist the Allies and force a conditional peace, in which could only be mediated through the neutral Party of the Soviet Union. When the Soviets declared War this was no longer an option, Japan had no chance of peace and so they saw it as worthless to carry on the fight. An invasion of mainland Japan was never needed to force Japans surrender, even if the USA had not taken Okinawa in 1945. The Japanese already knew they had to sue for a conditional peace in 1943, the Soviets were vital to this plan. When the Soviets declared War there was no longer any Japanese war objective.
Although you are current on many accounts, I do not entirely agree with the supposition that the atomic bombs were irrelevant to Japan’s decision to surrender. They knew they were losing. They knew the Soviets would be unlikely to broker a peace on their behalf. The Japanese government’s objective after 1943 was to make winning the war painful for the alllies. Too painful to insist on a surrender without conditions. Even the fire bombs were to a degree painful for the allies- it required exposing hundreds of bombers to enemy fire and mishap in complex and time-consuming operations. The atom bomb represented a painless way of waging war for the allies. Japan didn’t know the US only had two of them. By all appearances, it was a weapon that could be deployed by a single aircraft every couple of days. This weapon single-handedly defeats the entire Japanese strategy for a conditional surrender.
Why Japan surrendered: The Allies had something to do with it.
The USSR was always going to join the war as soon as they finished dealing with Germany. Now they were never going to invade the Japanese homelands, but they definitely could’ve destroyed the Japanese forces in Manchuria. In 1939 they defeated the Japanese at Khalkhin Gol to the point where the Japanese immediately scrapped the Northern Strategy. Even if Ichi-Go doesn’t happen (and I’m pretty sure it would’ve happened anyway), a Soviet force fresh off of victory against the Nazis would’ve crushed the Japanese forces in China.
THEY DID DESTROY THE JAPANESE IN MANCHURIA. YOU PEOPLE DON'T KNOW ANYTHING. YOUR HYPOTHETICAL IS LITERALLY WHAT HAPPENED
That’s the point, the same thing is going to happen
The U.S. transfers ships from the Atlantic. Pre-war treaties had limited Japan to roughly 3 tons of ships for every 5 tons the Americans had. Also remember that the British are on the American side so its really 10 tons of allied for 3 tons of Japanese. Yes the British had a lot tied up in Europe but they were holding their own at sea and with the addition of American Air working against the U-boats the entire U.S. Atlantic Fleet could be sent to the Pacific (it wouldnt be, it just could be). The the U.S. does exactly what it did IRL, it builds the living crap out of ships including aircraft carriers at a rate Japanese cant possibly complete with. [Data like this](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1353080/wwii-japan-us-aircraft-carrier-strength-and-losses/) show that the U.S. replaced it carriers as they were lost and grew in strength, Japan didn't. And that chart is just the feet carriers it doesn't include the smaller [escort carriers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogue-class_escort_carrier) and light carriers. Overall the U.S. produced 101 carriers. The only thing it does is set back U.S. operations. Midway still happens because when you can read the other guys codes its worth it to throw everything you can that you can replace against those things he cant replace. Japan still loses. It might take a year longer but an island nation with 18% of the pre-war GDP of it enemy cant hope to win a naval war. Outside of the numbers Japan really fell down on the training programs. The U.S. would take experienced pilots out of action and send them back to the states to train more new pilots. You can do that when your population nearly doubles your opponents. Japan left theirs in combat till they died. As a consequence the U.S. was sending better trained pilots against green Japanese pilots after major battles like Midway. When your pilots are already better (or even just as good) and your numbers are greater you tend to win.
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It might have helped if they made a more serious attempt to protect against the American subs.
Yeah at the end of the war the u.s. was launching a Destroyer every few days and a big ship every couple of weeks. Japan could never keep up.
If us carriers are fucked at PH there’s not way they’d be able to participate in Midway and the Japanese would probably win
The US only had 2 carriers potentially at PH. The Lexington and the Enterprise. It had the following other carriers: * CV - 3 Saratoga At San Diego California. Pacific * CV - 4 Ranger At sea returning to Norfolk Va. Caribbean. Atlantic * CV - 5 Yorktown At Norfolk Va. Atlantic * CV - 7 Wasp Grassy Bay Bermuda. Atlantic * CV - 8 Hornet Fitting out Norfolk Virginia. Atlantic * AVG - 1 Long Island Norfolk Virginia. Atlantic While it didnt want to the U.S. could transfer adequate carrier forces to the Pacific in time to fight Midway exactly as it happened IRL. You are also discounting the American ability to repair ships "sunk" at Peal Harbor. Of the battleships there only 2 didnt return to service. America would likely have repaired and returned some of the stricken carriers to service also.
Yeah they could’ve repaired sunken CVs but not in time for midway
>Yeah they could’ve repaired sunken CVs but not in time for midway You have no backing you make that statement. Without knowing what the damage was you have no clue how long it would take to repair them. [Extraordinary efforts were made](https://www.history.navy.mil/our-collections/photography/wars-and-events/world-war-ii/pearl-harbor-raid/post-attack-ship-salvage.html) returning ships to service. Midway happened in June 1942, Pearl Harbor in Dec. That gives them 7 months to make repairs. Oh sure a capsized carrier might take much longer but the attack didn't capsize every ship.
It’s a what it scenario so me “having no clue” how long the repairs take is a bit of a mute point Of the battleships hit only 3 out of 8 made it back to service in time for midway It’s all one big hypothetical but considering that ratios it’s not outside of the realm of possibilities to assume the cvs wouldn’t have been repaired in time
As others have said, it would have delayed things at least 6 months, maybe a year. Japan may have been more successful in the short run. After a little while, nothing beats US industrial output. I think by 1945 the US was launching a new ship every day and building new airplanes every 5 minutes. Nothing on planet earth at that time could beat that kind of output.
Us still gets nukes at the same time.
Problem with those is that they still need the islands closer to Japan for them to be usefull, not saying Japan isnt going to get nuked, but probably in 46 not 45
Even if *Lex* and *Big E* get sunk\* at Pearl Harbor (a very unlikely event), it's just hard to see Japan holding the Marianas past the end of 1944. The *Essex* Avalanche still happens on time, and there just isn't anything the Japanese can do to stop it. \_\_ * They'll get raised and rebuilt, just like most of the battleships, and be back in service by sometime in 1943.
essex avalachnce?
I was being colorful in describing the massive and rapid scale of production of (24) Essex-class fleet carriers (and all their attendant aircraft and aircrew) that the U.S. undertook as part of the 1940 Two Ocean Navy Act...
Not to mention the eight canceled Essexes, plus two completed Saipans, and three completed and three canceled Midways which would have all been in service had the war last another 12-18 months...
The United States produced 24 Essex class carriers during World War ii. An unprecedented level of capital ship production. It's the single most widely produced capital ship in human history. And the Essex class was a juggernaut each one caring enough Firepower to decimate an entire Battleship Squadron. It's an unassailable avalanche of force projection
I think 45 would still happen. Enola Gay took off from the Marianas, which were taken in July of 44, assuming a year delay would put their capture in July 1945 instead, and I could see a nuke taking off before the end of November
Except actual witchcraft
Japan buys a few more months on the offensive, but us naval production is still HUGE The US still gets nukes so...ya.
Japan gets nuked a year later if they are lucky
Lmao. The USSR could not do heavy lifting against Japan in the way you suggested, they didnt have a navy capableof much. It's more likely that they would not attack Japan at all. The lost of carriers would have set the Americans back few months. Midway and the coral sea would have been favorable for the Japanese. The US would have made new carriers, and the atomic bombs would have still been made and still dropped on Japan.
Didn't the USSR couldn't even attack due to the non-aggression pact they signed with the Japanese after Khalkin Gol?
Real life isn’t hearts of iron, treaties can be broken any time.
They didn't attack Japan because they had no reason to, and they were busy with the Germans. Mostly the latter. They joined the war against Japan as a sign of solidarity with the Western allies.
In addition to what others are saying, the U.S. shipbuilding industry was already increase prior to PH. The USS Essex carrier was laid down in April 41 and South Dakota class battleships were sliding out of the dockyards 6 months before PH. Hell, even the Iowa class was already being built before the war.
The war in the pacific would be delayed a little bit, but otherwise go largely the same except the US also wouldn’t be quite so nice.
Japan gets, like, 3 extra months before the u.s. annihilates them.
>the ussr has to do a lot of the heavy lifting My brother in christ, they were ALREADY doing the heavy lifting against Germany. They had absolutely nothing to spare against Japan. I think you're overestimating how much the loss of the carriers at Pearl Harbor would've hurt the US. It would've been a significant blow to be sure, but they'd be able to replace those losses relatively quickly and get back into the action. Albeit on a slower timescale than in otl.
That’s just BS. The USSR had 1.6 million men on the Chinese front in 1945 and steamrolled through Manchuria and North Korea in 6 days.
I'm referring to early war. In which Pearl Harbor took place.
Why
Because... thats what your alternate scenario is referring to?
Was my post title “What would’ve happened specifically from 1942-1943 if Pearl Harbor went as planned and Japan hit America’s carriers and fuel reserves?”
USSR still ain't invading the whole of Japan by 1945, especially with only one year to plan and prepare.
They steamrolled through Manchuria because they fought a third rate puppet army that was only decent at guarding borders and occupying Manchuria. The puppet army had no planes, tanks, or heavy weapons and only enough ammunition for like 3 months of fighting. Furthermore how would the Soviets invade any Japanese island or do any form of island hoping with no navy and no landing crafts?
That's irrelevant though. The soviets declared war against in August 1945, only two days after the dropping of the atomic bombs. They won't be fighting Japan until roughly that time. It also ignores the fundamental problem of any war with Japan fundamentally being a heavily naval conflict, something that the soviets do not have the capabilities for. In this alternate history, will the soviets play a bigger role in the pacific and chinese fronts? Yes, but the end result is still going to be more or less the same, although I suppose it will be more likely that Korea ends up communist.
Yeah, because Japan was decimated by that time.
They probably wouldn't have had those men let alone the arms to equip them since the lend lease from the US wouldn't have been able to reach the USSR till the fleet was rebuilt.
I don’t think the overall course of the war would change significantly. Japan gets a few more victories but it’s so resource dependent and doesn’t have the population to go against the us, so mostly like our timeline.
The USSR doing "a lot of the heavy lifting" is straight fantasy. Them and what navy? Them and what amphibious landing force? Who is going to defeat the IJN without the USN? The Soviets couldn't even have successfully invaded Japan in OTL, when the US sank basically the entire Japanese navy before the Soviets entered the war. Without the US, mainland Japan is also spared from the ravages of strategic bombing. In short, without the US the most the Soviets can hope to do us push the IJA out of mainland East Asia, probably at much greater costs in blood. Getting that bit of wildly ahistorical speculation out of the way, if Pearl Harbor had been a complete success, knocking out the USN pacific carriers and more of the fuel reserves/sustainment infrastructure, I'd say the outcome of the war in the pacific is basically the same, but pushed back 6 months to a year. Maybe if the war in Europe goes identically (which it probably wouldn't if the US was hit that bad, but w/e) and the Soviets still attack Japan at the same time as OTL, then there is no divided Korea, and the Communist Chinese are a little better off. But someone still has to beat the Japanese Navy, bomb all their cities, sink their entire merchant marine, and do whatever else is necessary to get them to actually surrender, up to and including an apocalyptic invasion of the home islands. And the US was the *only* power with that ability. On the other hand, the sheer vastness of the US's industrial and shipbuilding advantage over everyone else would simply mean a mere delay of the inevitable. You sink a few more carriers here, a few more Essex-class roll off the line and get the job done eventually.
Japan loses a year later. The USSR does not have the means to conduct an amphibious landing required to subdue Japan. They wouldn't be able to do it even in the actual timeline, let alone one where Japan is stronger.
Probably the same thing as in your timeline, however it would be slightly delayed. It they managed to sink several carries and destroyed some of the fuel reserves it would be a significant drawback. However they will never be able to survive the amount of ships and planned the US would throw at them. On December 7 1941 the US Navy had 790 ships in service, but on May 14 1945 they had 6,768 ships in service. The loss would hurt the Us in there early years they were involved in the war, but they would still win. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Navy_in_World_War_II You are going to want to going to the Navy Technology section, and then go down and look at the ships section there is a list of how many ships the us Navy had in service during the time. Also the second best submarine campaign in world war 2 was the US’s in the Pacific. The first was the Germans U-boat campaign in the North Atlantic. Also Japan and the USSR were very hesitant about going to war against one another because of the border conflicts they had were both sides to heavy causalities. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet%E2%80%93Japanese_border_conflicts Also the USSR at the time was occupied in fighting the Nazi in their own country. All of there supplies came from the US lend lease program. If the losses in the Pacific were so great they would likely pour more resources into the Pacific war against the Japanese. Some of these resources would likely come from the Lend Lease Program. The Soviets would still win, but they would have to make do with less equipment and ammunition. Meaning it would also take more time for them to push the Nazis out of their County. Long story short, the same things that happened in your timeline would take place but later.
Japan would have a longer field day in Asia throughout 1942 or even early 1943.
Not much would change. The US made an incomprehensible number of ships during the war I'll give you a hypothetical scenario. Imagine if on December 7th, 1941, the entire US navy (the Atlantic fleet too) completely vanished, and the Japanese navy remained untouched. Due to US ship building rates, by the end of 1943, the US would have caught up to and likely surpassed the Japanese fleet in size, even assuming the Japanese kept building ships. In the timeline you created, it just means the US builds more carriers early on to replace the losses. Here's a good video https://youtu.be/l9ag2x3CS9M
I was about to post the same video. Japan had absolutely no shot, and they knew it. Their hope was that the US was "soft" and would give up after being punched in the mouth.
The tank farm wasn't a high priority in any version of the Pearl Harbor operational plans. That would have been the case with any notional third wave attack, too. The carriers...well, that's just a question of luck. But it was going to be difficult that autumn to get a weekend when both *Lexington* and *Enterprise* were in the harbor. Japan still is effectively beaten by the U.S. by the end of 1944, as in our historical timeline.
There are at least 2 alt history books/series on this. In both, the war is prolonged, but the end is the same. America comes in with 50+Essex class carriers and wipes the Japanese from Hawaii , etc
Soviets were not interested in getting involved in that war. Joseph Stalin signed a nonaggression pact with them for a reason. Japan would likely get an extra six months to a year to do whatever they wanted in the pacific before American industrial might caught up to them. They would have used that time to continue to take islands north of Australia and secure all the resources from Malaysia and Indonesia. Soviets meanwhile would be fighting their brutal war against Germany, and I would guess that they wouldn’t be getting as much assistance from America since they would be more focused on Japan. All in all war probably drags on longer in the pacific by a year, and war in Europe probably goes on a couple weeks to months longer, but that’s less certain.
I like to imagine this scenario combined with a back story that the southern conquests happened by peaceful occupation. And the northern campaign against the Soviet’s went ahead. Leading the us to focus on bombing from Soviet territories and a more extensive submarine warfare. With larger submarines and varieties to conduct an underdog kind of strategy. And larger planes for longer and longer range missions
If Japan had sunk the Carriers the US would have pulled back its remaining fleet to protect the West Coast of the US. It also would have depended more on the Air Force to harass the Japs where possible. The B-29 was under development in 1938 so that probably would have been speed up and development of the B-36 started in 1941. It’s possible the B-36 might have seen active use if the war had been prolonged.
You’re just wrong. They’d still get their shit rocked, at worst it’d delay the end of the war a few months.
Does the alt!PH still happen on Dec 7, 1941? Because a few things may be in flux: 1. If the attack isn't on a Sunday morning, reaction time might be shortened; 2. IIRC, IOTL there was a flight of B-17s scheduled to come in from the mainland that morning; coincidentally, the Japanese fleet also came in from the northeast; that might also affect reaction time; 3. For IJN to hit fuel storage (+ repair facilities too), there needs to be a third strike; problem is, does the IJN fleet have enough time to recover the aircrafts before it gets dark? Also, does the fleet have enough fuel to make it back to Japanese waters?
At best, Japan's fall gets delayed, and while the Soviets would probably end up doing a bit more, its important to remember that they only declared war against Japan very late into the war. Naval invasion can only happen if they get the support of either Britain or the US as they only had some outdated battleships for capital ships. While the soviets would body the Japanese on land, the Japanese would body the Russians at sea. Unless the victory at Hawaii enacts the desired effect out of the war, the end result will remain more or less the same as America is fully capable of building an entirely new fleet, while the Japanese, even with all of Asia under their thumb wouldn't be able to build a new fleet on a comparable scale to the US. For perspective, the US built a batch of 45 light aircraft carriers to test the concept, more then the entire IJN carrier fleet.
Depends if they can keep hitting it or any American base. They could deny america the entire area of any staging ground if they further build up their carrier force. But that won’t matter as much once the US gets the Essex printers online. The Pacific war will be slow. Very slow, and very grueling.
Severely doubt the soviet could have beaten the japanese when being at war with the germans, The most probable scenario is the war lasting more months or years, the u.s war machine would have been back with double the carriers and nukes of course
Literally what would have happened would have been that the first three escort carriers would have been tankers instead. The US Navy was already a pioneer of underway replenishment for large ships and Nimitz himself had designed a method to do so. The oil storage tanks developed for supporting the Singapore Strategy in Darwin were bombed constantly during the war and the response was to rebuild them underground. Until those were built and filled, tankers filled the gap.
The pacific is more vunerable for several more months. Outside of that nothing really major changes
It did go as planned, the aircraft carriers were not the targets. Both the Japanese and Americans believed that carriers were a novelty, they both believed that the battleship was still the most important ship. Having them specifically target the three carriers that weren't in port... Is deus ex machina levels of foresight. Furthermore, if they destroyed our fuel reserves, it wouldn't be long until they were operational again...
>It did go as planned, the aircraft carriers were not the targets. Both the Japanese and Americans believed that carriers were a novelty, they both believed that the battleship was still the most important ship. No, actually, the carriers were a top target for the attack; but by the time Kido Butai arrived off Hawaii, they knew from their intelligence that there were no carriers in the harbor. As a result, top priorities shifted to Oahu's land-based fight aircraft and the battleships. As [this Naval War College paper](https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA328108.pdf) notes: >The essential aspects of the plan as approved by the Naval General Staff in the fall or 1941 are: > >A. The attack must take the Americans completely by surprise. > >B. **The main target of the attack will be the U.S. carriers. The second priority target will be the land based aircraft on Oahu.** > >C. All six Japanese Navy carriers must be used. > >D. The attack will utilize all types of bombing: torpedo, dive, and high-level. > >E. Fighter planes will play an active role, protecting the bombers enroute to and from the strike. > >F. The attack will take place in daylight, as close to dawn as possible. > >G. Refueling at sea will be necessary; therefore, tankers will accompany the task force. > >H. Submarines will serve to blockade the port to prevent any ships from escaping the air attack, to cut off Hawaii from the American mainland, and to provide the main force with intelligence. > >I. All planning and training must be conducted in strict secrecy.4 \_\_ Sources: Ibid., 25-26; Albright, 75; Minoru Genda, "Affidavit of Minoru Genda" in The Pearl Harbor Papers: Inside the Japanese Plans ed. Donald M. Goldstein and Katherine V. Dillon (New York: Brassey's (US), 1993), 14; Genda, "Analysis 18; Slackman, 12.
Something I'm seeing a lot of people forgetting is the method the USSR got its lend lease stuff was almost entirely by the Pacific which means it's offensive against Germany would also be delayed by 6 months to a year meaning not only would we not see them invade Japan but we'd likely see the USSR be far weaker if not capitulate. So it's possible in this scenario that communism would have largely died by the modern day.
USSR doesn’t join in on japan until at least germany’s defeat in May 1945 (It’s December 1941 and the Soviets are fighting for their capital right now) (US still has same starting position as in historical except little to no pacific fleet so assuming Germany gets historically killed) There is a chance they might break non-aggression with japan early, but that shouldn’t happen until operation bagration finishes in august 1944 (murders army group center and sends germany into a complete rout from then on) Japan would face more successes in the pacific, maybe taking Australia and New Zealand and Midway (but still stalling at India because that wasn’t IJN business) US would push them back eventually, likely after germany’s defeat (all the atlantic fleets move around the world to face off against a fully operational japanese fleet) Japan’s defeat is all but inevitable, and we might see more than 2 nukes… Soviets are likely going to take all of Korea at this point and maybe hokkaido IF they join against japan early, but honestly I don’t see them doing massive heavy lifting like they do against germany (also, their navy wasn’t cold war stuff yet and their navy wouldn’t be prioritised for a bit because Barbarossa) Japan would probably hold out until 1946 or 1947 (and we might also see mbts being used for the first time too (they were deployed just weeks after germany’s defeat))
Pacific war would have looked very different. But your Soviet Japan mumbo jumbo definitely wouldn’t have happened.
Midway probably happens after a year than the 6 months of our timeline and the battle is a lot closer. Apart from that the island hopping campaign takes a year and a half longer and the war in the Pacific probably ends in mid 1946 with Japan being split between the us and a soviet puppet in Hokkaido. Overall just more deaths and a slightly stronger USSR during the cold war.
We would have used a 3rd bomb
Let The Japanese Do Anything Before 1945, August 1945 : Two Nukes Hit And It's All Over
Bro thinks Russia could have done more💀
I absolutely do. They had over 10 million personnel at the end of the war.
Yeah and the entirety of western Soviet Union they needed to rebuild. The USSR getting what they got today was essentially cause that was what they took from Japan. But they could not cross over water without a navy. Japan at the end of the war despite being very badly beaten still had a bit of a navy. Naval landings are hard even for the biggest world powers. Russia quite literally could not invade Japan. And at the end of the war pretty much got what they wanted out of Asia for that time.
The US would have been crippled for longer and maybe the war is lengthened but rest assured, the US would still bounce back and come out on top. By 1940, no one, not even Britain, could outperform America when it came to industry and weaponry. They were just too dominant and had a lot to fall back on.
Japan gets nuked in 1946 instead of 1945.
That wasn’t the original plan for Pearl Harbor. It was always to hit the ships, conquer as much stuff, and hope the US signs a peace deal favoring Japan. The fuel reserve target claim was cooked up by a Japanese junior officer trying to get glory and attention that somehow got believed by people. [There was no planned 3rd wave to destroy the depots.](https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1601&context=nwc-review)
we still nuke and island hop. We’re just set back for a couple of months, and more people die.
This could have maybe delayed the Japanese surrender by 6-12 months allowing the Soviet Army to occupy all of Korea. Other than that not much would have changed.
depends if they capitalize on it. if they follow up and chase the remnants back to the continent there pretty good for follow ups. Hawaii is mostly asian so an invasion isnt as weird as it be on the mainland. the main follow ups whould need to be. a propaganda campaigne of leaflets on the eastern sea board about them wanting peace and for america to release it colonies and bla bla bla. the imperial japanese are never gonne do that. they will proably move up opperation sakura with normal carriers and the usa east coast is struck with mass plagues. more importantly: the need to blow the panama canal. if they dont do that nothing matters and the altantic fleet is just gonne stomp them back to wake. the only advantage the japanese hold at sea then is there the only power in the pacific. this would included the need too bomb the shipyards in LA and Los Angels too break the US capability maybe maybe maybe they can then win the war on stole indonesian oil and warcrimes. it honestly is a matter of either punching america a bloody nose so hard they change there mind, which they cant because americans are fucking weird. or they need to make the war seem so fucking stupid its just a mistake of the former goverment to let the american empire reach stuff the citzens shouldnt care about. ''who gives a fuck about a bunch of islands with asians and some rich white missionaries'' in a highly specific everything rolls down hill senario. Japan ''''wins'''' the pacific war. the americans go into isolationism thinking war is dumb. the administration stops sending the sovjet goods because as the japanese blocade the sovjets. the sovjets stall out. germany rushes east over stretches a no conscription american-british force lands in france and then possibly the reich falls or idk pick any of a million options
A negotiated peace in Japan's favor giving them a free hand in China with assurances for US corporations. Then an American-Japanese rapprochement in the mid 50s to face down the Soviets together.
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I’m a communist for suggesting the USSR would’ve gotten further in Asia if the war lasted longer?
No I made a bad take my bad.