Suppose Midway had gone the other way?

Japan was overextended as they were.

 

They had the will but not the means... Even Admiral Yamamoto didn't believe that Japan could win against the USA.

In a sense Japan was trying to fight WW2 like WW1. Their strategist didn't understand that the world had progressed passed bayonet charges and solo dogfight.

But I wonder what would have happened if instead of attacking the American they would have sticked to the British possession and Australia. The Australian and British Navy were almost wiped out in the region and with that carrier group intact, they wouldn't have had any problem dispatching the rest in both the pacific and Indian ocean.

With the congress and senate playing the isolationism card, Roosevelt wouldn't have had the support he did after Pearl Arbor. Even Hitler wouldn't have declared war against the USA, even though he would still have lost to the russian in the end, unless Stalin would have made the bad move of keeping Joukov in Siberia to guard the Japanese in Manchuria.

I wonder how long Australia and NZ would have lasted being totally isolated from the commonwealth and open to naval bombardment.

They could have at that time sued for peace and keep the Dutch West Indies with their oilfields and Indochina with its rubber.

 

Not feasible. They could barely supply bases much closer to Japan.

No, they have an outpost in the middle of the ocean.

There were still two carriers available (Saratoga and Wasp), and Essex was launched a month later. However, the reason they couldn't have invaded Hawaii is simple logistics.

No, it really isn't.

 

You are right there. Keep in mind that they also had a ton of troops in China and Mongolia not to mention all the island fortress' they had to man. They didn't have enough boots on the ground avail for Hawaii. Midway was just an island that had to be neutralized as it was in their "rear". The Japanese suffered from a disjointed command structure, enmity between the army and navy and actual insubordination from their junior officers (mostly in the army)-this caused the Japanese fighting man to lose effectiveness and strategy suffered, although man for man they were the equal of any soldier. The truth is, had intelligent people been in charge of the Japanese government (such as Yamamoto) the war would have probably not happened, or certainly not in the manner it did. While I agree that Midway was a great tactical victory, I still believe the Coral Sea was more important strategically.

 

Before Midway the Japanese Navy was always on offense. After Midway the Japanese Navy was always on defense.

 

That's what Midway gave them. A supply source a couple days sail from Hawaii.

And a secure air and refueling base just a couple days sail from Hawaii.

Wasp was sunk at Midway in our hypothetical.

Japan was waging campaigns many thousands of miles from the home island.
There is no reason to think it could not have mounted a successful invasion of Hawaii had it had its Midway carrier and invasion group and the US lost its carriers in that battle.

That's what they said about Signapore and the Phillipines.

 

Midway wasn't a supply source for anything other than seabirds and tiger sharks. Midway wouldn't have been secure because it was in range of B-17s and submarines.

 

Zamboanga & Manilla would be First World ?

 

From what I checked, Midway was not within bombing range of B-17's. And submarines would have been vulnerable to Japanese Midway aircraft.

But I was rethinking about Hawaii. Of course Hawaii would still have been secure.

Because even if the U.S. lost all of its carriers at Midway, Hawaii would need no aircraft carriers to defend it.

The U.S. had operational radar on Hawaii. And land based aircraft could be ferried out to Hawaii that would make Japanese carrier attacks suicidal.

There is a big "IF" though. As I recall, the U.S. moved its remaining Pacific Battleships to the West Coast because of alarms that the Japanese might attack the West Coast. If that type of over-reaction continued, U.S. might have kept the resources needed to defend Hawaii on the mainland.

 

I'll take your word for the range of the B-17s.

It's interesting to remember that the Midway Operation was conceived by the Japanese because of the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo. I wonder what other acts of ingenuity the Americans would have come up with if Midway had fallen?

Do you know the big old structure right above the cliffs at Devil's Slide south of San Francisco? It was built as a coastal defense installation out of fear of the Japanese. There were similar installations around Santa Cruz. There were Japanese subs prowling our waters. But this was a short lived phenomenon, and I think the fear of a west coast invasion had passed by the time Midway was fought.

 

If you ever come to Montreal and you ever vist the historical quarter "old Montreal", you'll find a clock tower there. At the base of it are two naval gun that were installed during WW1. Now, by the time an hostile force would have showed up in range of those gun, those ship would have been the least of our problem since Montreal is all the way inland and at the end of what was at the time usable by sea going ship since the St-Lawrence Seaway wasn't open to deep draft navigation until 1959...

Defensive work don't always make practical sense... Sometime they are only of a psychological nature to make the civilian feel secured.

 

Drove by that thing just this last weekend. Shame its closed off to the public- probably they have some concern about people falling off the stairway and dieing.

Anyway- many more coastal defense structures up in San Francisco- we had heavy batteries- 12-16" guns, and light batteries ringing the bay- many of the bunkers are still there. However, lots of these were started far in advance of WW2.

 

No, you aren't paying attention: the Japanese couldn't supply MIDWAY!

Hardly...it is a flyspeck of an island in the middle of the ocean, on the end of a long, frayed, shaky supply line & would have been under constant seige by aircraft & submarines. Couple that with the fact that any port facilities would have been wrecked, the airstrips and hangers blown up, and the vital fresh water condensor destroyed and the Japanese are looking at months of work just to make it useable.

Nonsensical...Wasp was in the Atlantic. She didn't enter the Pacific until July 1942!

My point exactly...the Japanese were ALREADY stretched too thin!

Once more from the top: The Japanese could just, just barely supply garrisons much closer to Japan. They couldn't even keep Guadalcanal (a stone's throw from their enormous air & naval base at Rabaul) supplied! They had ZERO chance of keeping Midway supplied.

 

The biggest reason the older battleships were moved to the west coast was logistical: they burned enormous amounts of fuel, and the US, initially, lacked the tanker capacity to keep them at sea. That's why they were never committed in the fight for Guadalcanal.

 

This is what is called a tour de force.