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Originally Posted by varmint
the whole point of this discussion is to speculate on what would have happened if we'd lost the naval battle of midway. the japanese invasion only turned back because they lost air superiority. the marines on the island simply could not have held.
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Hold what ? The Island itself was useless for what the Japanese needed. That was one of the great failures of the Japanese plan to begin with. They expected to turn it into a major base, but it was wholly unsuited for such a use. Their intel sucked, the entire operation was nonsensical. As was their invasion of the Aleutians.
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Originally Posted by varmint
imagine losing the enterprise and hornet as well as the yorktown. most of the enemy carriers survive. the japanese then have almost ten months before the first essex class shows up. they base bombers out of midway, land on kaua'i, and put up a fighter strip there.
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You're smoking hashish. Huge quantities of it. The US would have had Hawaii so well defended the whole darn IJA couldn't have taken it.
No post war study has suggested the Japanese could ever have taken Hawaii due to a US loss at Midway. It's a total pipe dream. It's even more ridiculous a hypothetical than Sea Lion was in the ETO.
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Originally Posted by varmint
the p-38s are all going to europe. the pacific command has to beg for everything they get. the sub fleet is still crippled by torpedo problems. and surface ships are useless without air cover. it only makes sense to withdraw the fleet back to san diego.
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The P38 fleet was only sent to Europe in response to the disastrous early daylight bombing raids over Germany, and only because the threat to the West Coast- which was never real anyway- had receded.
USN Surface ships operating off the US West coast would have had air cover from P38s as far out as 1000-1500+ miles from shore. Had the P-38s been moved to Hawaii(as they'd almost certainly have been if the US lost at Midway), they'd have been able to start hitting any Japanese Invasion fleet at ranges triple that of the Japanese own carrier based fighters ability to launch strikes.
It is true the USN MK13 torpedo was a disaster, but they did work sometimes, and the US would have had so many subs guarding the approaches to Hawaii it's highly likely they'd have done some significant damage to the Japanese Invasion fleet.
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Originally Posted by varmint
armor almost pointless on a jungle island.
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Hawaii is not a jungle island, and no, armor is not useless in Jungle terrain either. Limited yes, but not useless. All the more so because of the IJA's complete lack of suitable anti-armor weapons.
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Originally Posted by varmint
and the enemy could have cut off and starved any army there.
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With What? Flying against Hawaii Kido Butai would have been outnumbered massively in aircraft. Probably 4 or 5 to 1. If not more. And unlike Pearl, there would be no massive strategic surprise.
The US would have been waiting for them, with the kitchen sink.
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Originally Posted by varmint
american industry would win eventually. but the war goes on 2-3 years longer.
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It would not have lengthened the war appreciably given the fact that US heavy bombers flying out of China using atomic weapons would have still ended it in 1945.
The Japanese just plain could not compete in the long term with US industry and manpower levels, let alone the US nuclear program.