[varmint]

Originally Posted by m21sniper

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.


an airstrip within bomber range of hawaii is of no practical use?


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.


i wish, you have yet to explain how. like we defended the phillipines?

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.


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.


so, in your fantasy, there was no bombing campaign disaster in europe?

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 a practical impossibility to provide fighter cover for convoys the 3000 or so miles to the islands. what are your P-38s going to use for fuel? what is this army going to eat? what are the hundreds of thousands of civilians going to eat? a carrier and a few dozen submarines could completely interdict shipping. look at the chaos the germans caused on the murmansk run.

you have yet to explain how we were supposed to have stopped them. with what? the one aircraft carrier we had left, the ranger? 10 months of nothing. read any good history of the bloody night battles off the solomons. it was a disaster. then picture the same battles taking place off molokai.

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.


"they did work sometimes". is that the best argument you have?


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.


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.


suppose i am the japanese commander. i base bettys and mavis's out of midway. land troops on kauii or one of the smalller leper colony islands. build an airstrip, and now have zeros, vals and kates in range of pearl harbor. begin blockading the big islands. any american surface ships that challenge me are going to get mauled. the subs are still a marginal threat. i have ten months to reduce hawaii to starvation before even one fleet carrier can challenge.



The US would have been waiting for them, with the kitchen sink.


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.

the bomb does change everything. the only point i will concede.