What if they got the bomb first, which was possible, though apparently not likely?
What if, feeling that victory was possible, they turned the biological weapons they were developing in China on us?
And, yes, there is that question of bomber range:
Posted on 06/05/2012 1:21:45 PM PDT by moonshot925
Enterprise, Hornet and Yorktown are sunk with their 231 aircraft. The Japs take Midway. All 4 Jap CVs are undamaged.
Can the Japanese launch an invasion of Hawaii before the American carriers roll off the line in 1943?
4 Essex class CVs and 5 Independence class CVLs will be in commission by 1 July 1943.
7 Essex class CVs, 9 Independence class CVLs and 19 Casablanca class CVEs in commission by 1 January 1944.
“and by so doing to undermine those who do believe in a free market”
What kind of loopy, backwards reasoning is this? Those who maintain a free market at home benefit from trade with those who break it abroad. The latter only hurt themselves.
Your supposed distinction between a free market and free trade is specious. They are one and the same. Free trade is an international free market. If one of the participants in the internation free market restrains trade within their own border, all that means is that they have no free market domestically. It doesn’t mean, I don’t know what, that they’re abandoning the free market in the interest of free trade.
Sorry if that doesn’t make sense, but I admit, I can’t make sense of what you’re saying. The beauty of free trade is that you benefit from it regardless of how your trading partner organizes his house.
“Starting with a B-25, working your way to a B-29, is scaling ‘up’”
In that case, yes. But correct me if I’m wrong but Doolittle’s raid involved a whole mess of planes with loads of bombs. It had to, to be at all meaningful. Which it wasn’t, really, but to make headlines like they wanted it had to do some damage. To my mind going from a run of planes with a torrent of ordnance to one single bomb doing everything by itself is scaling down.
Two bombs, actually.
Neither of which, to the best of my knowledge, could be carried by any carrier-based aircraft ever built.
That's an understatement. The Japanese attack force was out numbered by the defenders.
A Japanese invasion of Midway would have been a slaughter. The only fire support would have been some cruisers, the Japanese battleships having mostly Armor piercing ammunition, not high explosive, making them useless. The fire support could not stay long because of fuel issues.
Midway was a fortress with IIRC, 7 inch and 5 inch guns, tanks, a PT Squadron, mines, several thousand marines, and no weak spots.
“Your puffery rapidly fizzles into ‘we make stuff’”
That’s true, but first of all specifying “Chinese chips” and name-dropping Hamilton demonstrates nothing. More importantly, the fact that we have a larger industrial capacity now than during the Great Depression (!) is so obvious as to demand no demonstration. I can just say it, and honest people would pause and admit it to themselves, and that’s all that should be necessary.
If you wish to persist in asserting we are less prepared for war with China, Russia, or whoever else you’ve built up in your mind as boogeymen, now than when we were when we were still British subjects, then you are beyond argument. We’re in the habit of fighting two or more wars on the other side of the dang globe nowadays. Americans of 1917 and 1941 would look upon us as Spartans.
Sixteen airplanes each carrying four 500-lb bombs.
That could be carried by a single B-29.
Except that B-29s weren't available in 1942, and couldn't fly off a carrier anyway.
What if they got the bomb first, which was possible, though apparently not likely?
What if, feeling that victory was possible, they turned the biological weapons they were developing in China on us?
And, yes, there is that question of bomber range:
Hawaii would either be reinforced to the brim or abandoned, but I dont think abandoned
aircraft from EVERYWHERE would go to Hawaii for reinforcements, Kaui would be a fortress more than Oahu, Johnston Atoll would have been armed and paved
However, not enough planes to make any real impact for 3 months, but still, Japanese aircraft would have to be repaired and built, and they also would have needed more carriers, just having 4 more than before would not guarantee victory
I only see a 1 year delay in victory
It did, however, have the ability to detonate on under the United States Navy. If, that is, it had a nuke in the first place. I have no doubt that the devotees of the Divine Wind would have tried it.
“Funny an article about midway which proves that an industrial base is critical to freedom is being molested by a free trader. LOL.”
Wow, that’s quite a bold misrepresentation, even for the internet. Let me clue you in on how to follow an argument. Actually, I don’t know where to start. You have it that I’m molesting the article? Well, no, I’m molesting protectionist mumbo-jumbo. You may read pro-protectionism into the article, if you think protectionism is the best way to have an industrial capacity capable of rapid mobilization. It isn’t, as obviosuly free traders are the richest nations in history.
This all started because I responded first to someone who thought it ominous that those dirty liberals have cut back on defense spending since 1945. Well, I should hope so. We weren’t going to fight WWII forever. There’s always the next war, of course, but as I pointed out his point was inapt as we are now in a much better position to mobilize than we were during the Great Depression. I’ve been criticized for speaking too generally, but really nothing more needs be said that in 1941 we were a decade into the Great freaking Depression. If you can’t see we’re richer, more economically efficient, and have a larger industrial capacity now than in the midst of the Great Depression, I have nothing more to say.
Then I responded to a post about how free trade is wrong because if China builds all our stuff they could refuse to build bombs for us to bomb Chinamen. Free trade doesn’t do that, and contrarywise has only made us richer since 1945. We are because of it by all honest accounts in a better position to arm ourselves than in 1941. If the American victory in WWII proved how important was industrial capacity to fighting power, I fail to see how this somehow contradicts free trade. Obly those who have the preconceived notion that free trade shrinks a nation’s productive capacity buy that.
That isn’t at all true in general, and demonstrably has not been true for our nation. But allow me to point out, further, that one of the chief causes, or rather chief prolongers, of the Great Depression was the trade war. Remember Smoot-Hawley? Without it, no doubt, we would only have built things faster and better.
“What if they got the bomb first, which was possible, though apparently not likely?”
There is almost no chance of the Japanese ever being able to develop nuclear weapons in the 1940’s.
To build nuclear weapons, the United States had to employ 130,000 people, construct 30 large facilities around the country, acquire thousands of tons of raw materials and spend $2 Billion.
The Japanese did not have the time, money, resources, knowledge or technology to achive this.
“we have a strong vibrant economy and a huge manufacturing base and we remain at peace while ‘wasting’ money on defense”
We have a stronger and more vibrant economy than in 1941, though not as strong as I’d like. Nevertheless, protectionism wouldn’t make it better. And, yes, defense spending wastes a lot of money. How supposed conservatives thoughtlessly assume waste in welfare programs but never can see it in defense is beyond me.
“Except that B-29s weren’t available in 1942, and couldn’t fly off a carrier anyway.”
But we’re not talking about 1942. The a-bomb wasn’t available then anyway. If there was no way to deliver nukes from aircraft carriers, okay. Then we would have had to island-hop after a loss at Midway, and whatever lag in time that required would V-J Day be pushed back.
“Two bombs, actually”
Well, two runs. One bomb per run, which was the point.
“Neither of which, to the best of my knowledge, could be carried by any carrier-based aircraft ever built”
If that’s true, than the Doolittle example would be irrelevant.
Then why did you bring it up back in Post 49?
The Japanese were not only developing, but had actually deployed, chem and bio weapons in China. They didn’t dare turn them loose on the Allies (outside of a handful of isolated instances) because they knew the West had far more experience with them, from not all that long ago, and would unleash hell on them in response.
That article would have been a below-the-fold subarticle in a larger expose on the US Navy’s homophobia, destruction of the environment, and discrimination against women.
Here’s my two cents on the “Hawaiian Invasion” question...the Japanese would invade, to what end?
As in, why would they want to?
The Japanese Army’s running wild across East Asia in 1941-2 was geared primarily towards one thing...seizing strategic resources. They wanted the oil of the Dutch East Indies, and the rubber, tin etc. of Indochina and Malaysia. Food was certainly useful, but I don’t think it was as vital; they could plunder plenty of that from China, Korea and Manchuria. (Food from conquered lands was valuable primarily in terms of trade for finished goods from Japan’s industries.)
Outside of the Indies, Indochina and Malaya, most of the other land they grabbed was for strategic reasons more than anything else. Burma and Thailand constituted a rearguard protection of Indochina against invasion from India and cutting Allied supply routes to China, and the Philippines were a strategic defense of Japan’s primary supply routes north and south (which straddled the PI). The Army’s forays into the Central Pacific and Southwest Pacific islands (which again netted the Japanese nothing resource-wise) mostly was due to the demands of the Navy...partly because of the Navy’s expectation of the great Mahanian “decisive battle” in the central Pacific, but mostly because the Japanese Navy (rival in all but name to the Army) was petulantly saying “we can play conqueror too!”.
Time has to be considered as well...the Japanese knew that they would only have X amount of time to grab what they were after, before they expected the threat of an orchestrated reprisal from the United States and Britain. The amounts of time allocated to each Army commander to achieve their objectives was not great. General Masaharu Homma, who was actually one of Japan’s best generals, was allotted only fifty days for his assigned conquest of the Philippines. (When that took four months and additional troops pried away from China and Java to complete, Homma’s career was ruined.)
To make such rapid conquests possible, the Japanese had spent years on spying and reconnoitering their intended targets. Their landing forces were dependent on long stretches of poorly defended beachfront, lots of ground intel, and encountering unprepared or ill-trained colonial forces and unmotivated Western regulars caught off guard...neither the Japanese Army or Navy had anything approaching an actual doctrine of amphibious-warfare-under-fire a la the US Marines. Also, the supply lines involved were fairly short.
With Hawaii (and, frankly, with Midway too), the Japanese were looking at a hard target that offered nothing for the effort. They did not have the intel of on-the-ground conditions in 1942 to plan an invasion, they were facing the ultimate citadel of motivated, alert, mad-as-hell Army, Navy and Marine forces, who had nowhere to retreat to (and so would have stood and died fighting), and did not have a serious plan for landing forces in the face of concentrated resistance. And even if they could have taken it...what good would it have done them? It offered nothing of consequence in the way of resources...what there was wouldn’t have been worth the shipping. Indeed they would have had to supply a garrison on Hawaii, and that would have stretched the limit of their supply lines in submarine-infested waters.
In a nutshell, Hawaii wasn’t worth the effort to invade, and the Japanese knew it. They considered it worth threatening for strategic reasons (again geared towards drawing the Allied naval forces out for the great “decisive battle”), but that was all. In the brief time the Japanese knew they had to grab territory and resources, there were far more important pickings to be had.
A major H/T to Jon Parshall and his website, www.combinedfleet.com, for his and his associates’ extensive study of this and many other deep questions of the Japanese side of the war.
There was NEVER a chance that the Imperial Japanese Army would or could EVER invade Hawaii, let alone the US West Coast.
They did not have any troops as they were tied up in China.
They did not have any ships available to carry the troops as Japan started the war short of shipping.
They did not have enough tankers to maintain a fleet off or Hawaii for an assault. They barely had enough for the Pearl Harbor raid and Midway.
Even if they did, they not have the fuel to support that kind of invasion.
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