Then the war would have taken an extra 2-3 years, but the result would have been the same.
Japan perhaps could have taken Midway, and threatened Hawaii. Nimitz would have been under pressure to back off on confronting the Japanese until carrier strength was re-built. Japanese perhaps would become more entrenched in Philippines and SE Asia, perhaps also buying them more time in Burma and China.
The USA would still have had massive industrial capacity, the Japanese would still have had massively overstretched supply lines, and the A-bomb development would not have changed.
One now has to wonder why the liberal governmental policy post-WWII worked so feverishly to destroy that industrial capacity and leave the US so dependent on other nations and “outsourcing” that we can’t even build our own refueling planes but give the order to Airbus, and buy Eurocopters too. Never mind all the bogus computer chips from China that infect our military hardware . . .
The USA would still have had massive industrial capacity
“Then the war would have taken an extra 2-3 years, but the result would have been the same...the A-bomb development would not have changed.”
These two comments don’t jive with eachother. I should think that even with Japan possibly in Australia and Hawaii and without Americans on the homeland (if Okinawa is actually Japanese homeland), Hiroshima and Nagasaki would be too much to walk off.