This is currently my first alt-history,a pet project and, most importantly, still a work in progress! Expect more massive updates to this page soon!
In keeping with my vision for this piece, I had to nuke the Moff's contributions and start again. Sorry, dude! Judgement 01:47, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
POD[]
The current POD is during the Battle of Midway, where instead of the US winning the battle, the Japanese did. I think this is not very probable, since at this point the US is in a better advantaged position than the Japanese. The main reason for this is that due to US intelligence, the Americans knew of the attack on Midway before hand, and had prepared accordingly, while the Japanese thought they were launching a surprise attack. In fact, the Japanese emphasized so much on steath on this mission that Yamamoto's supporting forces of battleships and cruisers trailed Vice-Admiral Chuichi Nagumo's carrier Striking Force by several hundred miles, so by the time the battle started none of their formations was mutually supporting.
A better POD would be that prior to planning the battle, the Japanese invented a new cipher to encode their radio transmissions. That way, the Americans would not have intercepted Japanese plans for attack, and Japan carried out the invasion as planned.
The Japanese plan , which included an attack on the Aleutian Islands in Alaska as well, was to lure the American carrier fleet into a trap and destroy it. In and ideal situation (for the Japanese) the invasion of Midway would succeed and America would rush to defend it, running into a trap.
Greekmythfan 15:34, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
I'll have to disagree with you on this. Midway was, as of the battle, the last major American naval base in the Pacific that wasn't on the U.S Coast. While it is true that the Japanese's emphasis on stealth was key to their loss, the only reason that the U.S was able to defeat them was because they had sufficient numbers to do so; something that could not be achieved without the support of the Yorktown. As you can see by my althist, the Yorktown was available for the battle, and U.S forces were severely hindered by this. Judgement 03:15, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
1) Midway was not a "major American naval base"; it was a little sandspit with an airstrip. Oahu was the major American naval base".
2) The Japanese had no possibility whatever of capturing Oahu. By mid-1942 there were about 500 aircraft stationed there - more than the entire Japanese carrier fleet could carry. There were also about 200,000 troops. Japan's feeble logistical capacity was stretched to the limit supporting about one division of troops on Guadalcanal, even with control of the rest of the Solomons and a base at Rabaul, only 1,200 km away. Oahu was 4,000 km from the nearest Japanese outposts, just as close to California.
3) The Japanese had no possibility whatever of occupying Australia. They could have landed a modest force at Darwin, and probably taken it. But from Darwin to, say, Brisbane, is about 2,700 km, through barren desert and mountains. About the same distance as San Francisco to Chicago. Japanese troops were good light infantry, but they never had the capacity for large scale overland operations. If the U.S. was completely out of the war, then the Japanese could have sent naval forces to bombard coastal cities and perhaps force Australia to capitulate, but an actual occupation was never possible.
Sorry to rain on the parade, but violent unrealism is not interesting.
This is not to say that Japan couldn't win at Midway. If Japan had changed cipher keys a month earlier, the U.S. would not have the intelligence that made victory possible. The Japanese could have sunk ENTERPRISE and HORNET (YORKTOWN probably would be left under repair), and captured Midway, without losing their four carriers. This would have seriously crimped Allied operations in the Pacific. But even this would not give Japan the huge additional capacities required to take Oahu and conquer Australia.
Rich Rostrom rrostrom.21stcentury@rcn.com
p.s There was no Japanese Admiral Chiuchi. There was an Admiral Chuichi Nagumo. Japanese would call him Nagumo Chuichi; perhaps that's the confusion.
I have to disagree on some points here, though you all clearly did your homework. I agree that new cipher keys would have negated the US advantage in espionage, I think that other PODs could have had the same effect. For example, if Japanese subs had arrived ahead of time, whereas they were late in our timeline, they could have warned the Japanese fleet of the American ambush and/or attack the carriers beforehand in their own ambush. Also, if the Japanese Army and Navy cooperated and withdrawn forces from China, they could have had enough strength to at least harass Oahu and Australia and starve them out.
Hlanus (talk) 01:47, March 14, 2013 (UTC)Hlanus
...I swear, every time I think we've caught all of these "wanks," someone finds another one, lol.
You are, of course, correct all around. The appropriates tag have been added.
Lordganon (talk) 02:53, March 14, 2013 (UTC)
By "wanks" I guess you mean loopholes, so to say? Well we are talking about alternate timelines, which are the accumulations of actions and reactions to choices made between people. So in essence, this is a fun intellectual exercise, but to expect it to be more than that is truly unrealistic.
That being said, there are a number of choices that could have been made on both sides that could have brought this about. If the US navy decided to pull out of Hawaii to cut down losses, that would have made the invasion easier. The same would have been true for the British with Australia. As one of us pointed out (not sure of his/her name) Austalia is essentially a huge desert with a mountainous ring around it. Thus, occupying it would have been a major logistical feat, so why bother using troops if the terrain would do just as well? So an occupation of the coast would have been feasible, if albeit barely, though NOT the whole continent.
I think the more likely course would have been to knock out naval repair and supply facilities in Australia so the Japanese south border would be secure, leaving them free to attack India and Bangladesh, which seems to have occurred as well according to the map. Please correct me if I am wrong.
Hlanus (talk) 05:33, March 27, 2013 (UTC)Hlanus
A "Wank" is not loopholes. Rather, it is something so ridiculously biased in one direction in opposition to all logic and reasoning that there is no way whatsoever that it is possible. This is a very good example. Basically, everyone on one side gets everything handed on a silver platter, and the other side does everything to help them, in opposition to everything that would have in fact have been done.
Japan invading Hawaii or Australia is quite literally impossible. Both have been shown numerous times to have been something that Japan could not physically have managed. Impossible to land troops or supply them.
This is why, in part - there are other things in it that are in fact worse - it is called a "wank."
Lordganon (talk) 11:19, March 28, 2013 (UTC)
I think that one thing we HAVE to watch out for is our tendency to think that just because something did not happen in our time means that it was impossible. In hindsight, it DOES seem obvious that invading Hawaii or Australia was impossible for the Japanese, but hindsight is always 20/20.
Hlanus (talk) 15:45, March 28, 2013 (UTC)Hlanus
Records and studies have conclusively proven that it was impossible, looking back. And as such, anything that has it occurring is a "wank" in favor of Japan. Call it hindsight all you want, but it's still the facts. Lordganon (talk) 08:12, March 29, 2013 (UTC)
Can you give an example of the facts you are talking about?
Hlanus (talk) 15:18, March 29, 2013 (UTC)Hlanus
...You seriously can't be bothered to google that yourself? I don't have the time or desire to do any teaching, and I will not. Lordganon (talk) 11:26, March 30, 2013 (UTC)
I could google it. But I want to see where you are getting your info, so we can see the same data and if we come to the same conclusions, then you are probably correct and I am an idiot.
Besides, this whole timeline is, as you say, biased because no matter how many ships the Japanese sunk, the US would just keep on making them until they wore out the Japanese. They simply had too many people, too much money, and WAY more industrial capacity. The only way Japan COULD have won would have been if the US political resolve faltered, as it did in Vietnam, and the Day of Infamy completely destroyed any and all chance of that. A disaster at Midway would have simply strengthened their resolve, not weaken it.
Hlanus (talk) 14:26, March 30, 2013 (UTC)Hlanus
...Conclusions made by many, many experts and the product of discussions observed in many places for decades - and even the opinion of several of the Japanese commanders prior to Pearl Harbor. Quite literally, you have to google it.
And you hit two of the reasons there right on the head. Add supplies and resources to that.
Lordganon (talk) 07:43, March 31, 2013 (UTC)
Thus, why this timeline is under the category: ASB-Biased. And I know several Japanese commanders who knew the real futility of such a war. Only the junior officers truely believed they could win. The senior officers, including Yamamoto, only hoped that the US would rethink their peace terms. Yamamoto himself said "we can run wild for six months, or a year... but beyond that, I have no confidence". The whole point of Pearl Harbor was to be a KO punch: BUT, the Japanese foreign ministry was slow to deliver the declaration of war, so the US could brand the attack as a sneak attack, shattering the isolationist mentality. So, Japan had only two hopes: SOMEHOW attack the US mainland, which we do not see here; or get a major power to mediate on their behalf. However, Japan remained allied with Germany, the Soviet Union, the only major power they were NOT at war with at the time, would have probably consider negotiating on Japan's behalf ridiculous and politically dangerous. Better to let the US hammer them into submission. SO in all, Japan's situation was hopeless.
Still, if the right decisions were made in the right order, this COULD have happened. But the odds of such a sequence are......need I say it? Have a good one.
Hlanus (talk) 07:59, March 31, 2013 (UTC)Hlanus
The timing of the declaration of war is irrelevant.
Impossible to attack the US mainland.
USSR was in a "truce" phase with the Japanese. Had been since clobbering them in the 1930s. Their alliance with Germany is also irrelevant.
No - it could not have happened. There quite literally no way the Japanese could have defeated the United States in the Pacific War.
Lordganon (talk) 09:11, March 31, 2013 (UTC)
Actually the timing WOULD have had some affect. If the Japanese fought the US fair and square, as Yamamoto clearly and strictly argued for, then the US would not have felt as "cheated" as they did in our tmeline, and they could have gone to the table without so much lost face. The other stuff, as you say, is correct. But I still hold that the declaration of war MIGHT have had some impact: not to WIN per see, but to convince the US to resume negotiations and be more accomodating to Japan. THAT was the whole point of the operation, and the whole crux of initial Japanese strategy in the Pacific War.
Hlanus (talk) 17:46, March 31, 2013 (UTC)Hlanus
...Please tell me that you are joking. Because that's just as bad as not declaring war first. Lordganon (talk) 10:14, April 1, 2013 (UTC)
I am NOT joking. Yamamoto himself said that if we are to strike, it must be decisive. It must be a blow not against the Phillipines, Wake Island, Guam, or Hawaii. It must be against Washington itself. And when he heard how Nagumo left the infrastructure intact, he realized the scope of the strategic disaster the attack handed, which was only exacerbated by the delayed delivery of the declaration of war.
Hlanus (talk) 23:58, April 2, 2013 (UTC)Hlanus
Sorry, but there is a zero point zero chance of this alternative reality happening. Please see http://www.combinedfleet.com/pearlops.htm and http://www.combinedfleet.com/economic.htm for details.
73.223.50.64 04:27, May 17, 2015 (UTC) SnowLeopard
Bad statistics aside, I see the page. Where do you find these pages?
Hlanus
Europe[]
Does this have any effect on the European Theater?--71.52.242.48 18:24, December 30, 2009 (UTC)Anonymous92
I think this would have had two possible outcomes for the European Theater: either the war ends sooner or it ends later. If the US stayed in the war, they would have been able to send their full force against Germany and thus end the war sooner. However, if the Americans pulled out of the war entirely, then Britain and Russia would have had to fight Germany all on their own.
Hlanus (talk) 01:53, March 14, 2013 (UTC)Hlanus
1942[]
Hello, Hlanus here. Looking forward to how this turns out. However, I am somewhat confused on some of your points, specifically in 1942 after the altered Battle of Midway. You said that Japan signs a co-defense treaty with Colombia. Why would these two nations sign such a treaty? At this time, in our timeline, Colombia was teetering on the brink of civil war, which would culminate in The Violence. Coudl you give more background on this?
Hlanus (talk) 01:42, March 14, 2013 (UTC)Hlanus
Also, I am curious about the negotiations at Vladivostok. If I remember rightly, Japan and the USSR had fought a long series of border skirmishes since the Japanese occupation and annexation of Manchuria. What would the symbolism of the USSR mediating peace between Japan and the USA be? I understand that doing so would warm relations between Japan and the USSR, but please elaborate on the symbolism you spoke of. Also, Japan tried to sell itself to the West as a counterbalance to the USSR and the Chinese Communists. Would that not have had an adversive effect on the peace talks?