Japan could have won WW2

[GagHalfrunt]

Where do you think the bulk of the sub force was operated out of during the war?



The distance to Hawaii from San Diego was an order of magnitude larger. With Hawaii as a launching off point the West coast would not be safe from bombing either, and likely the Panama canal would have been closed. It would have been far harder for the US to gain momentum even with the resource advantage. Did you bother to look at a map of the Pacific before you posted?

Bombing what from where exactly? You're clearly assuming some magical increase in the capabilities of Japanese weapons, their manufacturing or the amount of manpower they could put into the field. The further they got from Japan the more difficult things got for them and they lacked manpower and the material to capture Hawaii and keep it fortified and supplied. They wanted to knock out the bases, all our weapons, deny the base to us to break our will and keep us from contesting their conquests in the rest of the Pacific. They had absolutely no ability to take Hawaii and use it as a base to attack the US west coast, NONE. It was never even part of their plans. Did you bother to grow a brain before you posted? This isn't rocket science. Japan COULD NOT attack the US mainland in any meaningful degree and they COULD NOT impact US manufacturing in the slightest no matter how devastating and complete a victory they might have achieved against Peal, Wake and Midway. 100% destruction of the US Pacific fleet, all five US carriers sunk, all US subs destroyed, all battleships, destroyers, cruisers and support ships taken out, all fuel storage on Hawaii blown up, every plane reduced to rubble STILL would not have allowed Japan to take the island and use it like your ridiculously unrealistic scenario. Their best case was to destroy it, blockade it in the hopes that we would find it too hard to rebuild it and decide to not fight for it. And with the distance it was from Japan and the difficulty in keeping a blockading fleet equipped even that was a silly pipedream.

 

[iGas]

Where do you think the bulk of the sub force was operated out of during the war?



The distance to Hawaii from San Diego was an order of magnitude larger. With Hawaii as a launching off point the West coast would not be safe from bombing either, and likely the Panama canal would have been closed. It would have been far harder for the US to gain momentum even with the resource advantage. Did you bother to look at a map of the Pacific before you posted?

How would Japan fuel those ships and planes, specially so far away from home in distant islands?

Unless the Japs had working nuclear fusion power plants early in the war, and/or given the technology to dilithium crystals by aliens.

 

[K1052]

Maybe if the US carriers were destroyed

That assumption was made in a previous post of mine.

Without carriers the US could not have controlled anything out of land based fighter range along the west coast.

 

[qliveur]

And winged monkeys could fly out of my butt.

 

[sdifox]

That assumption was made in a previous post of mine.

Without carriers the US could not have controlled anything out of land based fighter range along the west coast.

First Essex class came online in Dec 1942. If Japan managed to wipe out the Pacific Fleet carriers, that construction program would have been accelerated. They were bulilt in the Atlantic, Japan couldn't do shit about them and neither could Germany.

 

[Exterous]

Without being able to match them at sea, they would have went apeshit across our holdings in the pacific much faster. By the time we were on an even footing again, Japan would likely have Hawaii and the Aleutian islands. Maybe have closed off the panama canal. Strikes on the western coast would have been possible. The war would have looked much different. Not guaranteed for Japan, but not nearly as predictable as it was.

Why would they do that? They didn't even want Hawaii and Midway at the start of the war. You think they just left Midway alone out of ignorance? No - what they did was remove the US bases they thought would allow the US to strike at Japan (Guam, Wake) . They looked at invading Hawaii and it was decided it was too much of a logistical risk/impossibility while providing no needed resources. They didn't want to take the US on for the entire war - just remove the USN's ability to interfear with their South Pacific aspirations.

It wasn't until the Doolittle raid that they realized their calculations were wrong and that they needed to take Midway as well

The distance to Hawaii from San Diego was an order of magnitude larger. With Hawaii as a launching off point the West coast would not be safe from bombing either, and likely the Panama canal would have been closed. It would have been far harder for the US to gain momentum even with the resource advantage. Did you bother to look at a map of the Pacific before you posted?

You know whats a bigger distance than from Hawaii to San Diego? The distance from Hawaii to Tokyo. If you somehow think the Japanese can mount a successful invasion and capture of Hawaii from Japan it is clearly even more likely that the US would be able to retake the islands. Furthermore - given the distances between Hawaii and the West Coast this would have represented a significant draw of resources and ships for the IJN while playing in the USN's home field. As you already pointed out they needed to consolidate their holdings on resource producing areas. Trying to strike the West Coast or defend Hawaii in any significant way would greatly reduce their ability to do so (Not to mention the heavy, almost unbearable, draw on their merchant marine)

That assumption was made in a previous post of mine.

I understand that but clearly that is not the only condition that would have been true. It is highly unlikely that they would have taken Hawaii at that point. Take all the things that would have had to go right for their first gamble to work and magnify them ten fold. No way they EVER would have bet on destroying enough of the Pacific fleet to let them take Hawaii. They were already under orders to make sure that the bulk of the carrier fleet remained safe and the strike had done more damage than they had hoped (or so the reasoning goes for cancelling the third strike)

All of the evidence - even studies from the Japanese side - is against any type of Hawaii occupation

 

[K1052]

Essex class came online in Dec 1942. If Japan managed to wipe out the Pacific Fleet carriers, that would have been accelerated. They were bulilt in the Atlantic, Japan couldn't do shit about them and neither could Germany.

One carrier. You seem to be under the impression we were only trying to build them on the weekends or something during 1942. Navy commanders knew full well how horribly outmatched in carrier strength we were at the start of the war and that no meaningful numbers of fleet carriers could be expected until 1943. This is well reflected in their strategy and outright paranoia about loosing carriers at Coral Sea and Midway.

My position is not that it would have been a cakewalk for Japan to win the war or even that a conventional victory was possible...though their goal was to make peace very favorable to Japan. Simply that in 1942 had the Pearl Harbor strike gone off as planned combined with the concurrent (but not coordinated) Operation Drumbeat off the eastern seaboard and general U-boat activity there was a possibility that the US could have been compelled to deal. Given the slim chances of everything going right nobody considered rational would take such a gamble but that kind of thinking didn't really enter into Japanese decision making.

 

[K1052]

I understand that but clearly that is not the only condition that would have been true. It is highly unlikely that they would have taken Hawaii at that point. Take all the things that would have had to go right for their first gamble to work and magnify them ten fold. No way they EVER would have bet on destroying enough of the Pacific fleet to let them take Hawaii. They were already under orders to make sure that the bulk of the carrier fleet remained safe and the strike had done more damage than they had hoped (or so the reasoning goes for cancelling the third strike)

All of the evidence - even studies from the Japanese side - is against any type of Hawaii occupation

Occupation of all of Hawaii would not have been required. With any major retaliation in kind being impossible we probably would have seen the use of chemical weapons to degrade or eliminate remaining US capabilities on Hawaii.

 

[sdifox]

One carrier. You seem to be under the impression we were only trying to build them on the weekends or something during 1942. Navy commanders knew full well how horribly outmatched in carrier strength we were at the start of the war and that no meaningful numbers of fleet carriers could be expected until 1943. This is well reflected in their strategy and outright paranoia about loosing carriers at Coral Sea and Midway.

My position is not that it would have been a cakewalk for Japan to win the war or even that a conventional victory was possible...though their goal was to make peace very favorable to Japan. Simply that in 1942 had the Pearl Harbor strike gone off as planned combined with the concurrent (but not coordinated) Operation Drumbeat off the eastern seaboard and general U-boat activity there was a possibility that the US could have been compelled to deal. Given the slim chances of everything going right nobody considered rational would take such a gamble but that kind of thinking didn't really enter into Japanese decision making.

I am saying even if Japan wiped out all the US carriers in the Pacific fleet, it would have only changed the timeline. The result would still be the same.

The entire pan pacific thing was a pipe dream of the damn imperialists that willfully put on blinders.

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

Why would they do that? They didn't even want Hawaii and Midway at the start of the war. You think they just left Midway alone out of ignorance? No - what they did was remove the US bases they thought would allow the US to strike at Japan (Guam, Wake) . They looked at invading Hawaii and it was decided it was too much of a logistical risk/impossibility while providing no needed resources. They didn't want to take the US on for the entire war - just remove the USN's ability to interfear with their South Pacific aspirations.

It wasn't until the Doolittle raid that they realized their calculations were wrong and that they needed to take Midway as well



You know whats a bigger distance than from Hawaii to San Diego? The distance from Hawaii to Tokyo. If you somehow think the Japanese can mount a successful invasion and capture of Hawaii from Japan it is clearly even more likely that the US would be able to retake the islands. Furthermore - given the distances between Hawaii and the West Coast this would have represented a significant draw of resources and ships for the IJN while playing in the USN's home field. As you already pointed out they needed to consolidate their holdings on resource producing areas. Trying to strike the West Coast or defend Hawaii in any significant way would greatly reduce their ability to do so (Not to mention the heavy, almost unbearable, draw on their merchant marine)



I understand that but clearly that is not the only condition that would have been true. It is highly unlikely that they would have taken Hawaii at that point. Take all the things that would have had to go right for their first gamble to work and magnify them ten fold. No way they EVER would have bet on destroying enough of the Pacific fleet to let them take Hawaii. They were already under orders to make sure that the bulk of the carrier fleet remained safe and the strike had done more damage than they had hoped (or so the reasoning goes for cancelling the third strike)

All of the evidence - even studies from the Japanese side - is against any type of Hawaii occupation

I wasn't trying to say that they should have invaded with the initial strike. I was saying they would have had accelerated invasions of the Islands up to and then onto Hawaii, and there's not much we could have done about it.

 

[K1052]

I am saying even if Japan wiped out all the US carriers in the Pacific fleet, it would have only changed the timeline. The result would still be the same.

The entire pan pacific thing was a pipe dream of the damn imperialists that willfully put on blinders.

There was a chance they could have forced a deal in 1942 with the Allies stretched so thin across the globe. Japan was a gambler playing very long odds for the big score and what happened usually does to such people.

The largest error made was the assumption that the US would and could not fight capably. We made similar assumptions prior to the start of the war.

 

[Lemon law]

The strike on Pearl would have worked if not for two operational problems and one planing problem. It was still an impressive feat of military operation but futile from a strategic sense.

1) Carrier force not in port. Failure to neutralize the US's most valuable assets.

2) Nagumo canceling the third wave that would have targeted repair yards, drydocks, and oil storage tank farms.

3) Not considering the submarine base to be a primary target.

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I can somewhat agree with the first two of K1052 contentions, but not the third. Simply because US subs were a non-factor for the first 30 months of WW2. Not because US subs could have been a factor earlier, but because US torpedo technology was almost totally worthless.

But in every major long war in the pre nuclear age, it often boiled down to wars of attrition as economic productivity decided the outcome in the end. As even Admiral Yamamato, the architect of the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor warned his government, that once the fire was lit under the US economy, it would soon develop unresistable power. As the USA entered WW2 with only three descent air craft carriers and ended the war with 50. And the USA entered WW2 with zero planes even remotely resembling competitive to Japanese zero's, and ended the war with excellent planes in every category. And with the B-29 bomber with their huge range, the USA was soon bombing the Japanese home land Islands. As silly Yamamoto never had the power to get beyond Pearl Harbor. To win his desperate gamble.

 

[Exterous]

I wasn't trying to say that they should have invaded with the initial strike. I was saying they would have had accelerated invasions of the Islands up to and then onto Hawaii, and there's not much we could have done about it.

Initial was their best chance with surprise. If they didn't do it then they weren't going to be able to do it. Again - their own military said it would be prohibitively expensive logistically. In a rare agreement both the IJA and the IJN agreed they didn't want to invade Hawaii

Not sure what you are going on that makes you think you know more about their capabilities than studies conducted by the IJN during the 1941-1942 time frame. In early 1942 they estimated it would take 14 carriers for the invasion to succeed. The Yamaguchi plan involved a crash building plan by Japan to devote nearly all of her building resources to just taking and holding Hawaii. (He also wanted to take Ceylon first to prevent the British from interfering - although later he dropped the requirement for taking it. Then they needed to take parts of Australia and NZ to secure their southern flank) They also couldn't decide on a landing force size. He decided to leave out of his plan the transport requirement. Captain Kami Shigenori - the one who did the logistics study - was steadfastly against his plan saying the Japanese merchant marine could not fulfill the task. The army said it couldn't do it because it lacked the amphibious vehicles and equipment to assault a well prepared force. (Later it is rumored they said they would provide no troops to a landing in Hawaii so the IJN was on its own for troops). The navy said they couldn't support the plan logistically. Even is Yamaguchi had found some support among the reluctant leaders (unlikely given how often his plan had been rejected) in the IJN his timetable for late 42, early 43 was thrown out after difficulties near Guadalcanal. Late 43 became the new time frame (Giving the Americans more than enough time to field 5+ new Essex carriers and numerous CVLs and CVEs).

You also ignore that they had no real desire for Midway or Hawaii initially for the reasons I mentioned earlier

 

[adlep]

No way stupid Japs could win.

 

[piasabird]

They lost because Americans were defending their homeland. Many of them were slaves to their Emporer who considered them to be a lower class of people. People who are fighting for freedom are different from soldiers who were paid to attack some other country.

Dont Tread on Me!

Japan attacked China, Indonesia, Korea, etc. They raped women, made slaves of the countries they attacked and worked people to death. They destroyed other civilizations and did all manner of evil. They even fed opium laced candy to children. How can such a race of blood-thirsty animals hope to defeat the USA. This is the thing you fail to understand. God Was on our side.

 

[rommelrommel]

God Was on our side.

/facepalm

God is always on the side of the big battalions.

 

[PowerEngineer]

I am saying even if Japan wiped out all the US carriers in the Pacific fleet, it would have only changed the timeline. The result would still be the same.

Pretty much this...

New carriers were already under construction.

Even if Japan had managed to muster the naval forces, they didn't have enough ground forces to actually invade Hawaii (or Ceylon or the west coast of the United States). Their army was already too deeply committed to the war in China and spread thinner by their conquests through southeast asia.

As the debacle at Midway showed, Yamamoto was far from infallible. His "Hail Mary" plans for extending Japan's sphere of control across the Pacific were unworkable.

Japan could never have "won World War II" unless the United States had just given up. It was a terrible mistake to think that was a possibility.

 

[sdifox]

Pretty much this...

New carriers were already under construction.

Even if Japan had managed to muster the naval forces, they didn't have enough ground forces to actually invade Hawaii (or Ceylon or the west coast of the United States). Their army was already too deeply committed to the war in China and spread thinner by their conquests through southeast asia.

As the debacle at Midway showed, Yamamoto was far from infallible. His "Hail Mary" plans for extending Japan's sphere of control across the Pacific were unworkable.

Japan could never have "won World War II" unless the United States had just given up. It was a terrible mistake to think that was a possibility.

Their diplomats told the military it was a very bad idea to hit USA. The diplos spent time state side so they understand the people a bit better than the army. The military command basically projected their own reaction s onto the Americans. Excpt Americans were very different than the Japanese.

But then they were assassinating dissident politicians and civilians, who dared to oppose them publicly. I doubt they were rational.

 

[Gibsons]

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I can somewhat agree with the first two of K1052 contentions, but not the third. Simply because US subs were a non-factor for the first 30 months of WW2. Not because US subs could have been a factor earlier, but because US torpedo technology was almost totally worthless.

typo? 30 months is a long time. And as bad as the torpedoes were, some of them still blew up.

Month
Ships Sunk Tonnage # Days on Patrol
January (1942) 7 28,351 322
February (1942) 5 15,975 363
March (1942) 7 26,183 363
April (1942) 5 26,886 396
May (1942) 20 86,110 396
June (1942) 6 20,021 446
July (1942) 8 39,356 437
August (1942) 17.5 76,652 462
September (1942) 11 30,389 454
October (1942) 25 118,920 504
November (1942) 8 35,358 512
December (1942) 14 48,271 512

Total 133.5 552,472 4,886

from http://www.valoratsea.com/month1.htm

 

[K1052]

Their diplomats told the military it was a very bad idea to hit USA. The diplos spent time state side so they understand the people a bit better than the army. The military command basically projected their own reaction s onto the Americans. Excpt Americans were very different than the Japanese.

But then they were assassinating dissident politicians and civilians, who dared to oppose them publicly. I doubt they were rational.

Yamamoto seemed to understand what he was getting into, he attended Harvard and spent quite a bit of time in the US due to his assignments. He also opposed some of Japan's imperial expansion and alignment with Germany/Italy to the degree that is was a real possibility that he could have been assassinated by factions in the government or military.

As far as Midway...it was an overly complicated operation (as the IJN was deeply fond of) but we had an enormous strategic advantage in that we knew they were coming, what their forces were, and the general plan of attack since we had broken the JN-25 code.

 

[sdifox]

Yamamoto seemed to understand what he was getting into, he attended Harvard and spent quite a bit of time in the US due to his assignments. He also opposed some of Japan's imperial expansion and alignment with Germany/Italy to the degree that is was a real possibility that he could have been assassinated by factions in the government or military.

As far as Midway...it was an overly complicated operation (as the IJN was deeply fond of) but we had an enormous strategic advantage in that we knew they were coming, what their forces were, and the general plan of attack since we had broken the JN-25 code.

Yamamoto knew what he was getting into, but since he was a general and not the military command, he had to do the best he can, thus surprise attack of Pearl Harbor.

He also died because of cracked cypher. US knew his itinerary and Roosevelt ordered the hit.

 

[PowerEngineer]

As far as Midway...it was an overly complicated operation (as the IJN was deeply fond of) but we had an enormous strategic advantage in that we knew they were coming, what their forces were, and the general plan of attack since we had broken the JN-25 code.

If you haven't read this book already, I think you'd enjoy Shattered Sword. It's a very good review of Midway from the Japaneese perspective.

http://www.shatteredswordbook.com/

 

[Greenman]

I pretty much skipped this entire thread, but I'm going to guess that Japan still lost?

 

[dud]

Before I scoff (again) at the OP's premise one must first define the term "win" in the context of "win WW2".

The Japanese hoped to create a great "co-prosperity" sphere around the home islands. The Japanese definition of "prosperity" in this case was they invaded, raped, pillaged, murdered, used slave labor, etc. for their own benefit and to the detriment of their victims. When the Japanese went to war with the US they had little hope of actually defeating the US but instead to beat the US so badly (militarily) that we would sue for peace ... leaving them to their sphere of "co-prosperity".

The attack on Pearl Harbor, coming BEFORE the ultimatum was delivered to the US Government pretty much put an end to that. For the US it was the unconditional surrender of the Japanese at all costs ... even if it meant destroying the empire in the process.

In summary, (IMHO) the OP's assertion the the Japanese could have "won" WW2 is fallacious. The Japanese hope for peace on their terms was dashed by their premature strike on PH.

 

[dud]

Yamamoto seemed to understand what he was getting into, he attended Harvard and spent quite a bit of time in the US due to his assignments. He also opposed some of Japan's imperial expansion and alignment with Germany/Italy to the degree that is was a real possibility that he could have been assassinated by factions in the government or military.

Correct.

"In the first six to twelve months of a war with the United States and Great Britain I will run wild and win victory upon victory. But then, if the war continues after that, I have no expectation of success."

Yamamoto made this statement to Japanese cabinet minister Shigeharu Matsumoto and Japanese prime minister Fumimaro Konoe, as quoted in Eagle Against the Sun: The American War With Japan (1985) by Ronald Spector. This remark would later prove prophetic; precisely six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese navy would suffer a major defeat at the Battle of Midway, from which it never recovered.