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.
Things would probably be different now.
I’m thinking that Crocodile Dundee would have ended up speaking Japanese. We would have won eventually, but the process would have been longer and less pleasant.
Then at least 5 million Americans, men and women with guns and the knowledge to use them would be behind every rock, tree, building, sand dune, and would have killed Japanese soliders.
Japs take Hawaii (after heck of a fight), and cripple themselves doing it. It goes down in history as "an island too far". USN builds carriers and Montana class BBs ... Manhattan project carried out more or less on schedule ... Japan gets nuked more than twice in 1948 ...
IMO
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.
VJ Day gets bumped the spring of ‘46.
If you’re really interested in Midway and its effects on the war, read “Shattered Sword”.
For what it’s worth, the author of the book maintains that the overall outcome of the war with Japan would not have changed; once the sleeping industrial giant was awakened, Japan’s defeat — sooner or later — was all but guaranteed.
At best (from their POV) we would've temporarily moved command & control fm HI to the west coast, delaying the inevitable US offensive for 6 months or so.
It would still have ended in 1945. Maybe in Oct instead of Aug,’cause we might have had to use more nukes.
The Japanese were planning an invasion of Hawaii for September 1942. They would have had Hawaii within land based bomber range from Midway.
I read an anthology of alternative history and the author of one piece argued the US would of attacked Japan via Aleutians and Northern Pacific. As others have posted a Japanese victory at Midway would of just delayed the inevitable.
thread can end here
It would have taken us another year. No matter what victories the Japanese won at that stage, they simply did not have the ability to project invading power into our mainland.
They could not interdict our oil, our steel, our factories. If they won Midway, then it would have taken us about 6 months to replace the losses, and we would have been probably more angry, more focused, and less likely to waste time on the MacArthur approach.
Also,, the Bomb was on the way.
The Japanese had no chance to ultimately prevail. Yamamoto himself knew that.
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
You’re rather more optimistic than I am ...
I doubt the Japs could have invaded Hawaii. The distances are just too vast for the Jap Navy to accomplish and then resupply. Just look at the failure (on a much smaller scale) of the Aleutians Islands.
However, it probably would have allowed the Japs to push south again hard. And if the Japs were smart - they would have made iron rings of outer islands that would have been tough to crack. And then sue for peace.
After a bad route at Midway - we might have taken it.
Good speculations - though the Navy would've first finished building all planned Iowa - class ships, rather than the curtailed list. Part of me really wishes that the Montana class had been built.
I'd add that some of those nukes would've possibly been carried by B-36s, rather than B-29s. If we'd lost Hawaii, the longer-range, higher-altitude bomber (already in the development "pipeline") would have come into play.
I agree with everyone.
The idustrial capacity of the USA was so great.
Just look at how much steel we produced in 1939
USA = 51.4 million tons
Germany = 23.3 million tons
USSR = 18.8 million tons
UK = 13.2 million tons
France = 6.2 million tons
Japan = 5.8 million tons
Italy = 2.3 million tons
http://www.euronet.nl/users/wilfried/ww2/1939.htm
We produced 9 times more steel than Japan in 1939
Sushi would’ve been our country’s staple but there would not have been any muslims here.
Nazis would’ve won and communism would have been defeated.
Hmmm.
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