# Did the US save Australia from the Japanese?



## Airborne (Nov 9, 2007)

I thought this might be better as a seperate post.

Well speaking from an Australian perspective, Japan would have ultimately devoured Australia.
Now before anyone here starts quoting known Japanese intentions in regard to Australia, it must be remembered that it is probably true at the start of the Pacific war that to occupy Australia was just as ambitious for them as occupying the western United States.
We are talking here about "what if?'
Without the US factor in Japanese military planning, Australia and all it's food production capability would have been gobbled up.

Japan did not have a very good record as to the treatment of countries it occupied. One only has to read about how they treated the peoples of Singapore, China and all the others to see how they would have behaved with our white European society.
Our people would have been enslaved, tortured and murdered like our POWs were who fell into their merciless hands.
Australia had a very narrow escape and we owe modern Australia today to mainly the US Navy and the destruction of the Japanese fleet.

Britain could not help us. They could hardly help themselves with what they had on their plate in Europe and with the Battle of the Atlantic. Britain couldn't even hold Singapore.
Australia who sent such a massive committment to aid Britain in the 1st World War got one hell of a shock at just how let down we were in our hour of need.

After the war Australia lent towards the US and away from Britain for a big friend in a hostile world. We honoured the Anzus treaty by actively participating in any war that the US got itself into.
The actual wording of that treaty says that we will come to the aid of each other if attacked, but that was stretched by us to include any conflict, as a way of showing Australia's gratitude for the help we received from America that we owed our very existance to.

As for the Japanese, nothing has changed there. We do not trust them any more today than we did then.
Their ethics today can be layed bare by just witnessing their attitude to the taking of uncountable whales for scientlfic purposes.

Never forget.

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## syscom3 (Nov 9, 2007)

Yes the US saved Australia, but its a very nuanced "yes".

In 1942, it was the Aussies (which I include the NZ troops) doing the fighting in NG with the US supporting.

The USN had success in the Solomons in that year due to the coast watchers ensuring timely intelligence.

In 1943, it was still a 50-50 affair as the US continued its build up and supplies to the ANZAC forces.

In 1944, after the summer of that year, the war shifted northwards and the threat to Australia was zero.

The ANZACians provided plenty of logistical support and their small navies were integral to MacArthurs amphib forces and small supporting fleet.

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## WARSPITER (Nov 10, 2007)

Say no more. The first two posts are as close to correct as possible.

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Nov 10, 2007)

Could not agree more. 

Sys I am very proud of you as well! You could not have stated that better and also in a very diplomatic way!


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## Emac44 (Nov 10, 2007)

It was a combined effort. The US helped Australia from being invaded by the Japanese there is no denying it. But we Australians even with our smaller population approximately 6 million at the time and with our Military Forces spread all over the globe due to the War in Europe also helped ourselves from being invaded in the capacity that was needed and that Australia could send or use and muster for self defense. 

Stopping the overland invasion of Port Moresby through Papua New Giunea Owen Stanley's and the USN and combined with Land based Aircraft of both the RAAF USAF and Aircraft from USN in the Battle of the Coral Sea. Which stopped the invasion of Port Moresby by sea or the landings in other possible targets by the Japanese Navy. It was in my opinion a combined effort. The US taking the lion share of the effort of course. And one must not forget that the New Zealanders contributed to the capacity they could muster as well. But the benefits to Australia and New Zealand of the US sending vast troop numbers aircraft ships etc has not been forgotten. The US gained something as well. Not just a huge land base and training areas for the near future in retaking the Pacific Islands and South East Asia and saving Kiwi and Australian arses over the short intrim but most importantly a long lasting friendship and allies in the South Pacific. And the benefits have continued for all 3 countries. For example trade and business being part of the benefits for all 3 countries.

And the US did benefit from local knowledge of the Aussies and Kiwis in the South Pacific Islands in conducting the war in the Pacific and that local knowledge came in handy when a future President of the United States of America needed to be saved along with his shipmates. Course I am referring to John F Kennedy and the crew of PT 109. But the intelligence work of the Coast Watchers mostly Aussies and Kiwis aided local intelligence for the US Forces and all Allied Forces fighting the Japanese. So I will say it again it was a combined effort and the benefits then multiplied a hundred fold today. We have a saying in Australia. Never let a mate down. It basically means you do everything possible to help a friend in need and you never forget the friendships formed and welded together.


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## Watanbe (Nov 15, 2007)

Yes I agree the first two posts were excellent...however i think your closing remarks were a bit unnecessary and dissapointed me to be honest!

"As for the Japanese, nothing has changed there. We do not trust them any more today than we did then.
Their ethics today can be layed bare by just witnessing their attitude to the taking of uncountable whales for scientlfic purposes."

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## Civettone (Nov 15, 2007)

Say Aussies, if the US wasn't around to help - for instance if the Battle of the Coral Sea was lost, or Midway - would Japan have invaded and occupied Australia? 


Kris


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## Watanbe (Nov 15, 2007)

Civettone said:


> Say Aussies, if the US wasn't around to help - for instance if the Battle of the Coral Sea was lost, or Midway - would Japan have invaded and occupied Australia?
> 
> 
> Kris



hmmm nobody really knows I guess...it makes sense because realistically Australia was the next step and was making quite a large contribution to the Pacific war. However I think that Australia would be a very hard country to invade for a nation like Japan! Australia is a hard country to defend yes with a very large coastline but the massive size of the country would make it difficult to overcome and id imagine the population would put up one hell of a fight!

Australia however also remember has vast raw materials while the japanese in general have very little, if they could capture australia and gain access to its raw materials they could become quite important and also as said above the food stocks!

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## syscom3 (Nov 15, 2007)

Watanbe said:


> hmmm nobody really knows I guess...it makes sense because realistically Australia was the next step and was making quite a large contribution to the Pacific war. However I think that Australia would be a very hard country to invade for a nation like Japan! Australia is a hard country to defend yes with a very large coastline but the massive size of the country would make it difficult to overcome and id imagine the population would put up one hell of a fight!
> 
> Australia however also remember has vast raw materials while the japanese in general have very little, if they could capture australia and gain access to its raw materials they could become quite important and also as said above the food stocks!



In the spring of 1942, the Japanese were at the end of a very long supply line. While they had the capability to invade NG and perhaps the northern reaches of Australia, they couldnt exploit it to any high degree.

The most probable thrust after a NG victory (assuming the Battle of Coral Sea was a tactical and strategic victory) would be to cut the supply lines from the US and Australia. That would entail heading towards the SE on the Solomons axis. Just maintaing a bomber airfield means you doinate the sea for a 500 miles radius

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## JoeB (Nov 15, 2007)

syscom3 said:


> In the spring of 1942, the Japanese were at the end of a very long supply line. While they had the capability to invade NG and perhaps the northern reaches of Australia, they couldnt exploit it to any high degree.


It all really depends on whether you assume the US was in the war, or somehow willing to stand separate from a Japanese war against the British Empire (including Australia) and do nothing *no matter what*. 

In the real situation the US was fighting to defeat Japan. The Anglo-Saxon countries are about as close to 'friends' as countries can be, but still countries have interests not friends. They don't really 'save' anybody.

I think your descriptions by year are not so accurate though. Sure, in land fighting in New Guinea the Australians carried the weight in 1942, but the overall war was a sea-air one, and Australia itself had little naval or air power of its own, and the British little to spare v Japan. The critical battles of 1942 were sea battles between IJN and USN with major impact of each one's air arms but only marginal roles for the sea and air power of the US allies (the disastrous early campaigns had a lot of Allied participation, but the key carrier battles and Guadalcanal campaign, where Japan's sea/air power was mainly tied down and attrited, pretty little. As you said, even the Aussie land role was less central in 43-45.

US non-entry is a completely different war. It requires suspending belief, not only about US attitudes but Japanese; they would have to trust a neutral US enough to leave the Philippines in US hands right astride Japanese sea lines of communications. But just assuming that scenario, Japan can easily conquer Australia if that's what they really want to do, unless perhaps Britain makes huge sacrifices in the European theater to send the bulk of the RN and much airpower to the Pacific. Australia itself had almost no airpower at home ca. April 1942, famous 75 sdn (P-40 unit in NG at the time) was practically alone, USAAF fighter units defended Australia itself (Darwin) against Japanese air attacks (from Timor) in 1942. And the lack of internal communication in the vast Australian continent would mean an attacker with sea superiority could leapfrog along the coasts using ports as if a chain of islands, only having to fight a real land campaign over short *land* supply lines from bases established on the edge of the populated portion of Australia, with a stranglehold on Australia's SLOC's with Britain and (the neutral) US. Australia alone couldn't stop such a Japanese attack ca. 1942. 

This had been the basic strategic worry particular to Australia, as opposed to Britain itself. A direct US-Australia relationship and confidence in a high degree of US-Japan tension was the strategic answer to it. That went all the way back to Japan's naval rise, Britain's alliance with Japan in 1902, the Great White Fleet tour of the USN, etc.

Joe


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## Watanbe (Nov 16, 2007)

thats a very good post and all very true. I still think that Australia would be a very difficult nation to invade, particularly in the 1940's. It would be to hard to supply the army in Australia and there is simply too much land to conquer. 

If they did invade and Australia recieved support I think it could of proven to be a disaster for the Japanese!

Of course all highly hyperthetical!


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## HealzDevo (Nov 10, 2016)

For my little extract I am assuming that the USA stays neutral during much of the Pacific And European War. It was the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbour that finally bought the USA into the War. I am also assuming that if the USA stays out of Pacific it is much less likely to worry with a European War even to the extent of Lendlease not really being active.

The US provided a lot of necessary help to Australian troops in the Pacific. The US had a heavy bombing component and also provided long-range fighters such as the P-38 Lightning which helped in the Pacific Campaign. A lot of the terrain that was being fought over was unknown. My mother tells me the American Command used to call my Grandfather into the Australian and American Headquarters when he was on leave from the US Small ships to explain and detail sections of map for them. He was an Australian serving as an American during the Papua New Guinea Campaign.

Also without US air and Naval support in the Pacific, Japan does not actually need to invade Australia to control it. With sufficient submarines, a very successful campaign of attrition could be conducted. Even with the Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation, a lot of the better designs for fighters and bombers in Australia were coming from overseas. Then the Japanese carriers can just come across and conduct attrition raids. The Zeros were a match for early aircraft such as the P-40s and such that made up the bulk of the early Pacific airforces... Britain wouldn't be much help in the early period of the War being involved in throwing every possible resource at protecting itself from Operation Sealion. America coming into Europe with lend-lease helped by providing extra resources to throw at the Germans, including heavy bombers capable of conducting daylight raids on German cities. An Allied bombing campaign without the American B-17s would have bled Britain and the Empire dry of qualified pilots assuming the pilots got to Europe... Conveys would be at the mercy of submarines- both German and Japanese torpedo attacks.

As I see it without American Air support in the Pacific, large areas of the Pacific are at risk of being swept up by the Japanese. Large amounts of oil, rubber, and other resources get subverted into the Axis cause. This hampers the Allied cause as artificial substitutes have to be developed to take the place of scarce resources, as attempted to happen in Germany in 1944-1945. Meanwhile, forces are getting pushed by buildups in other areas. The Japanese finally have the resources to build lightweight Zeros, other fighters and bombers in sufficient numbers to do massive damage. So in this version, Pearl Harbor gets launched latter in greater numbers, and succeeds in producing very significant damage, even if the Aircraft Carriers are not there. The repair facilities are damaged, and it requires a major rebuild of the base to bring it back to operational standards while it is getting harassed by Japanese raids. I still think that in the later scenario, Australia may be lucky to survive a Battle of Britain type siege possibly long enough for the Americans to finally counter the Japanese offensives; although it may take a while if America gets involved in fighting a German Axis with Far East Resources flowing in... I think that the end result is still the Allies win, but the result is much bloodier... I can't see the US staying totally neutral if it is challenged in the Pacific which is virtually the USA's Naval Backyard...


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## Shinpachi (Nov 10, 2016)

It is always interesting for me to know that not a few former Allied people still tend to mix up IJN with IJA even after more than half a century has passed away. IJA hated Anglo-Saxons as colonists very much but IJN because it had been brought up by the British Royal Navy.
It was IJN's role to attack Australia in order to rivet Australian troops inside their territory but the IJN commanders knew well that they were unable to occupy Australia without help of IJA but IJA was busy in China and Indochina. Invasion of Australia was armchair theory from the beginning.

At the same time, Royal Australian Navy Commander Gerard Muirhead-Gould had shown his great chivalry to Japanese people in June 1942 by launching the official navy funeral for the 4 IJN midget-sub crews who died in the Sydney Harbour in the previous month. IJN was much impressed with this very British style chivalry to refrain from attacks against the mainland. Australians saved their land by themselves.

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## pbehn (Nov 10, 2016)

Having visited that part of the world Japan and Australia are a huge distance apart and Australia is Fffffing huge.

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## syscom3 (Nov 10, 2016)

HealzDevo said:


> For my little extract I am assuming that the USA stays neutral during much of the Pacific And European War. It was the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbour that finally bought the USA into the War. I am also assuming that if the USA stays out of Pacific it is much less likely to worry with a European War even to the extent of Lendlease not really being active.
> 
> The US provided a lot of necessary help to Australian troops in the Pacific. The US had a heavy bombing component and also provided long-range fighters such as the P-38 Lightning which helped in the Pacific Campaign. A lot of the terrain that was being fought over was unknown. My mother tells me the American Command used to call my Grandfather into the Australian and American Headquarters when he was on leave from the US Small ships to explain and detail sections of map for them. He was an Australian serving as an American during the Papua New Guinea Campaign.
> 
> ...



The US wouldnt be blind for events in the Pacific. Pearl Harbor's defenses would be modernized and would be huge. And even if in no mood to get into a shooting war, the US was going to build the two ocean navy which would dwarf the IJN.


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## HealzDevo (Nov 11, 2016)

Even with modernized Pearl Harbor defences and a bigger navy, it would be hard to see that Japan would not be able to mobilize even more resources, if it didn't have to tangle with the USA early on. The Japanese pretty well almost took the rubber and oil resources available in that area. Even up until 1945 and the end of the war there was a prediction that a massive portion of any invasion force to the mainlands of Japan would suffer catastrophic losses. I foresee a much harder fight with the same outcome eventually of a defeated Japan. Keep in mind that the Pearl Harbor plan that went into operation was a changed version with less resources than the original that achieved great success. I am not saying that the USA would be totally blind but imagine Japan being able to commit more resources to an attack on Hawaii... 

Also it wasn't actually until after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor that the mobile floating aircraft carrier became a major doctrine in the US. At that time it was more a matter of necessity to shift to the carriers as so many battleships were out of the war for a year or more. So would we see more floating battleship targets for Japanese dive-bombers and submarines? More destroyers or cruisers? Also early in the war, the US Navy was not particularly effective, losing ships to friendly fire and mistakes. How many more aircraft carriers do you envision being built or converted considering that the US naval doctrine was one of floating Battleships and the power of a navy.

In this case, the war would be more bloody and dangerous, because air power would be more likely to mean at least for a long period in the early war, seizing islands to build up aircraft, one at a time...


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## Shortround6 (Nov 11, 2016)

Two _BIG _problems with this scenario.
1. the Japanese were unlikely to leave the Philippines alone while taking everything around them. The US had something like 29 submarines based in the Philippines in late 1941 in addition to surface assets. US had been building air strips in the Philippines during the late 30s. Those subs and their base were a serious threat to the Japanese supply lines. The Philippines were also seeing the largest build of B-17s in US service in the fall of 1941.
2. The US laid down 5 Essex class carriers in 1941, all before Pearl Harbor. 15 Cleveland class Cruisers were laid down in 1941 or before as were 4 Baltimore Class Cruisers. The first four Iowa's were laid down before Pearl Harbor. The US Fleet Build up had really started in 1940, Every day the Japanese delayed the Americans got stronger. The 2 North Carolina's had commissioned in 1941 and 3 of the 4 South Dakota class had been launched in 1941. Had the US not gone to war several of the old WW I battleships would probably been taken out of service. 

There was no way the Japanese could out-build the United States, letting the US finish it's fleet expansion program and aircraft expansion programs (FDR had called for 50,000 planes in the summer of 1940) meant the Japanese could NOT play a waiting game.

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## HealzDevo (Apr 29, 2018)

Even if those aircraft had got into service, a large proportion would have gone in being inferior. I am not saying the US would not have got involved eventually, I am assuming it gets delayed. We forget that at until the day of infamy speech USA was fairly evenly split. The Pearl Harbour Attacks just tilted the balance into one of War. Even with the dates those ships were laid down it is possible to assume initial replacement intentions on earlier ships built to fit WW1 shipbuilding treaties. The Phillipines happened after Pearl Harbor and therefore the War had already been declared...


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## Shortround6 (Apr 29, 2018)

As shown the US was not sitting idle. Massive building programs had started in the middle of 1940. While the US had declared war there was no way the old treaties were going to be adhered to by the US with Europe already at war, the US participating in an undeclared Naval war against the U-boats in the North Atlantic,
Japanese activities in China had already resulted in the Oil embargo. Japan was using fuel faster than it could replace it. There was no way to around the Philippines and seize territory further south and have anything resembling a secure supply line back to the home islands. 

perhaps some of the ships were intended as replacements for WW I ships but that would be battleships and destroyers, the number of left over WW I cruisers the US had can be counted on one hand with fingers left over (like 5). 

Please note that the US was rushing P-40Es to the Philippines before Pearl Harbor, plus B-17Es, A-24s (Army Dauntless) and A-20s. 
Also note that the Avenger was in production in Jan 1942. 

Delay the war more than a couple of months and there will be no Buffaloes in service, no Devastator torpedo bombers. The older P-40s will be replaced.

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## swampyankee (Apr 29, 2018)

Australia was not well-industrialized, and would need external sources for munitions; that supplier became the US. 

There wasn't really an alternative the US, as every other major industrial country was a Japanese ally, under German occupation, or trying not to be under German occupation.


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## Smokey Stover (Apr 29, 2018)

Australia saved Australia from the Japanese. At least in the early war years. The British and Americans, Dutch, French, all were kicked out of the Pacific region. There simply wasnt the men or more importantly, resources to do anything else other than man the beaches best they could and pray for a miracle. I guess in a way you could liken it to Britain in the summer of 1940. The threat was there/real, and if an invasion had happened it would have been very difficult to repel. Luckily in both cases it didnt happen. So as far as im concerned it's completely open to speculation/opinion. My question is, why does every question start with the US saving everyone from ww2 Now that does puzzle me greatly.

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## swampyankee (Apr 29, 2018)

HealzDevo said:


> For my little extract I am assuming that the USA stays neutral during much of the Pacific And European War. It was the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbour that finally bought the USA into the War. I am also assuming that if the USA stays out of Pacific it is much less likely to worry with a European War even to the extent of Lendlease not really being active.
> 
> The US provided a lot of necessary help to Australian troops in the Pacific. The US had a heavy bombing component and also provided long-range fighters such as the P-38 Lightning which helped in the Pacific Campaign. A lot of the terrain that was being fought over was unknown. My mother tells me the American Command used to call my Grandfather into the Australian and American Headquarters when he was on leave from the US Small ships to explain and detail sections of map for them. He was an Australian serving as an American during the Papua New Guinea Campaign.
> 
> ...



I disagree that it was Pearl Harbor that brought the US into the war in Europe; it was German aggression, _including that against the US_: the German Navy had already attacked and sunk US warships and had performed major acts of espionage within the US, including the theft of the _complete _plans for the Norden bombsight: German military diplomacy would be as successful in keeping the US out of WW2 as it had been in keeping the US out of WW1. Pearl Harbor hastened US entry into the War in Europe, but I'd predict the US would be involved no later than mid-1942. The Pacific is different: Japan could have avoided war with the US, but any president who acted with _any_ resolve against Japanese aggression in China would have brought Japan into war with the US: the only way for the US to avoid direct conflict with Japan, which was inevitable once the US placed an embargo against them, was the sort of appeasement that has made Chamberlain a _bête noire _to many. In other words, the _only_ way for the US to avoid conflict with Japan was for the US to give Japan _carte blanche_ in China. Having done that, there would be little reason for Japan to attack the Dutch East Indies, which it did for the oil, and which is why there was any kind of threat against Australia.

Back to Australia, then: Japanese aggression into China brought a US diplomatic response that resulted in Japan's decision to attack the DEI and Pearl Harbor. A neutral US would mean that Australia would not be threatened.

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## GrauGeist (Apr 29, 2018)

Smokey Stover said:


> ...My question is, why does every question start with the US saving everyone from ww2 Now that does puzzle me greatly.


I believe that question persists because the United States, with it's vast food supply and mass manufacturing ability, was able to provide much needed materials to it's allies in order to defeat the Axis.

I can honestly say that I have never seen someone ask "What if Mexico never entered the war?" or "How would Britain fare against Germany if Brazil never declared war?".
The fact is, that the U.S. did provide crucial materials that provided an impact in nearly every theater of the war - even if their military forces were not directly involved.

Maybe the question of "saving" everyone is overly dramatic and could better be asked as "How would Australia be impacted without U.S. involvement"...

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## parsifal (Apr 29, 2018)

without the US as an active member in the Pacific, it would be an impossible task to defend Australia. However the chances of the US remaining neutral whilst imperial japan devoured the whole region were zero.

Plausible what if scenarios might be a string of one sided defeats at sea. This was still a very long shot indeed. but catching the US carriers in port would have been a good start, or better yet, fighting them at sea just after the attack on Pearl would have robbed the USN of its ability to fight effectively.
,
From January to june the IJN would complete its conquest and consolidation of the far east , and then the So Pac and SW Pac. The allies would resist in the islands, but with the Japanese able to concentrate their forces at will and with their carriers unfettered by US carriers, it would be easy to isolate and destroy any allied controlled island in the pacific.

Australia and NZ would not be forced to fight as they did historically. They would mobilise home production more effectively, institute the fortress Australia strategy and on the basis of all available information, would have received massive help from the british. At least that's what Churchill said he would do and in this scenario I believe him. The british could afford to send about 6 divs, and about 1000 a/c to help defend Australia, and still hold the allied vital interests in the ETO and MTO . Sizable battle squadrons from the RN could be deployed 
, 

Given the shortages of shipping, both sides would have suffered massive logistic problems, However with those relatively modest reinforcements for the allies , I cannot see the Japanese being able to occupy mainland Australia in its entirety at all, and any enclave they might push to take would have been very vulnerable.

So no, with any realistic scenario, there is no chance of japan being successful in a conquest of Australia before the US returns to the battle at the end of 1943.

As a war gamer ive fought many hypotheticals like this, using mostly SPIs "War In The Pacific" system, USN suffers catastrophic one sided defeats, and is forced to retreat for a year or so. Australia and other Pacific nations are forced back onto their their own resources. Its hard, but the Japanese simply don't have the resources to comquer them, but they can do a lot of damage just the same. 
​

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## parsifal (Apr 29, 2018)

swampyankee said:


> Australia was not well-industrialized, and would need external sources for munitions; that supplier became the US.
> 
> There wasn't really an alternative the US, as every other major industrial country was a Japanese ally, under German occupation, or trying not to be under German occupation.




The Japanese were not a fully industrialised nation either. As far as munitions are concerned (in the traditional sense of bullets and bombs) Australia was a signficiant exporter of these products by 1942. We were an exporter of most small arms in British use. Our shipbuilding capabilities were poor and our aircraft manufacturing just beginning. having said that , if we had been left to our own devices in 1942 (with say US assistance in engine manufacture) our aero industry would have been a lot more significant than it was .

US involvement was vital, but there was unused potential in our war making ability that should be considered ,

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## swampyankee (Apr 29, 2018)

parsifal said:


> The Japanese were not a fully industrialised nation either. As far as munitions are concerned (in the traditional sense of bullets and bombs) Australia was a signficiant exporter of these products by 1942. We were an exporter of most small arms in British use. Our shipbuilding capabilities were poor and our aircraft manufacturing just beginning. having said that , if we had been left to our own devices in 1942 (with say US assistance in engine manufacture) our aero industry would have been a lot more significant than it was .
> 
> US involvement was vital, but there was unused potential in our war making ability that should be considered ,




My contention wasn't that Australia couldn't defend itself, but that a neutral US would preclude the need for Australia to defend itself against the Japanese. I just happen to think that for there to have been a neutral US, the American' government would have had to accede to Japan's aggression in China. Aggressive Japan triggered a lot of racial phobias in the American polity in ways that aggressive Germany did not.

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## The Basket (Apr 30, 2018)

Don't forget the sharks and crocodiles and killer spiders and snakes!!!!!
The physical size and climate would make any invasion pretty much a folly.

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## Torch (Apr 30, 2018)

There's a book called Lucky 666, It's basically a story of a B17 crew but the book goes into the history of the battles in that area. Pretty interesting read.


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## C.Warren (Apr 30, 2018)

Reading the wiki on Lease-Lend is very to the point https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease
A very complex issue that would have to be considered at each point in time for different options available to military or politians, way out of my ability.


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## Mungo60 (Apr 30, 2018)

All the comments i have read above are very interesting and do give me pause for thought on the "what if's". I know what the Northern approaches to Australia are like because i have operated and exercised over many years in the Northern reaches of Australia, Pacific Islands and the various South East Asian country's like indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand etc . And given that back in the WW2 war years distance was harder to overcome than it is now, any lodgement / invasion etc would be pretty hard set to expand a beach head and break out to take ground of importance, totally different to Normandy for instance. IF it had of happened I think it would have been a futile operation and would not have succeeded, indeed if the Japanese did make a lodgment all we would have needed to do would be to isolate and leave them to the forces of nature especially with the seasonal changes that we have - eg Wet season, Dry season in the North. As for the US saving Australia, i believe that without the US in the theatre if Japan won the Pacific Australia would have withered on the vine and eventually would have been absorbed into the Japanese Empire. I dont want to sound obsequious or fawning, but i am very greatful for the US war effort in the Pacific, the US suffered thousands of casualties and fought many bloody and hard battles and utterly destroyed the Japanese militarily and economically. And Australia is deeply indebted for that. This is my opinion.

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## VBF-13 (Apr 30, 2018)

Emac44 said:


> population approximately 6 million


Is that in Koalas or Kangaroos? Really, Japan had 10 times that. Were it not for U.S. involvement in the South Pacific, Australia was a Japanese colony. We even minted Australia's money for it, as we did for the Philippines. It was unacceptable for Australia to be taken. That wasn't going to happen. That's not to take anything away from the Australian resolve and contributions. Think of the Japanese blueprint for the Philippines, that was the blueprint for Australia.

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## pbehn (Apr 30, 2018)

The facts that Australia is huge and 5-6,000 miles from Japan is also a factor.

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## Shortround6 (Apr 30, 2018)

It is a bit closer but the Japanese have enough difficulty with shipping without trying to supply a force in Australia. 
Landing a force in Australia and seizing one or two ports/cities are one thing. Staying there and trying to take the rest of the continent is another.  
For example it is 1446 miles by air from Cairns IN Queensland to Melbourne which is roughly 100 miles further than the distance from northern Taiwan to the south end of the Philippines. or roughly the same distance as Gibraltar to Benghazi or 100 miles shorter than London to Kiev. 

It is going to take a lot of time and a whole lot of logistic support to try to take even a majority of Australia and the defensive problem is huge as the British/AMericans have a large area to strike back at and any contingent of troops might as well be on an island for all the mutual support they might get from the closest other Japanese group.


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## parsifal (May 1, 2018)

When I was in the navy we undertook a tactical exercise on "invading Australia". Wasn't exactly Japanese, but it was 1950's technology and force structures. There were two teams formed, red and Blue

In the first instance Red Force were the attackers and attempted to land without access to a deepwater port. There are not many such ports in Australia.
The invasion went ashore in our deep north and failed within a month of landings due to the lack of supplies that could be shipped in. The distances are immense, the infrastructure almost non-existent, In the burning heat of the central deserts the invaders just melted..

The second attempt was by blue force. Instead of bypassing the main ports of entry (PEs), the blue force commander went straight for Sydney Harbor, the most important port this side of San Diego. Though mines and harbor defences were available they had not been deployed and the invaders just sailed into the harbor at night and took the key defences without a shot. The Japanese suggested this might be possible in 1942 with their midget sub attacks. If they had plastered the allied air power out of existence beforehand, it might have been possible to take by coup de Maine one of the ports like Townsville in this way.

Japanese believed they could capture Australia with 10 divs and 2million tons of shipping. It was a price they were not prepared to pay. I think a more realistic estimate is 15-20 divs with about 3 million tons of shipping. they would need to evacuate China and allow their economy to fall into unrecoverable ruin to do this. I think they made the right decision to not risk it.

Japanese invasions have been gamed out many times using various gaming systems including Seatag and PW as well as the commercial WITP. None of the what ifs played out well for the Japanese.

The Japanese can cause an upset but its just the opposite to over-extending themselves. they need to clobber the US Navy early, not over extend themselves, fortify their defensive perimeters and build up reserves. With an adequate reserve, fully functioning convoy system and fortified outposts it can cause such bloody looses on the US attackers as to force them to the negotiating table. They do not win by embarking on risky adventures across the pacific

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## pbehn (May 1, 2018)

Japan invading Australia with active surface and submarine fleets in the region would be a great way to lose a whole army.

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## MiTasol (May 1, 2018)

pbehn said:


> The facts that Australia is huge and 5-6,000 miles from Japan is also a factor.



And the fact that Australia had no fighters to defend the country is an even bigger factor.

Australias front line fighter was the Hawker Demon.

They only bought 64 to start with back in February 1934 and by Pearl Harbor at least 27 were written off or converted to mechanical training schools.

So at best 37 Demons to defend against hundreds of Oscars and Zeros.

And a handful of Wirraway trainers - which outperformed the Demons anyway.

As for the Army, it was far more modern and up to date but all in England and the Middle East, little more than training facilities in Aus itself.

It would have been a cakewalk for the Japanese.

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## pbehn (May 1, 2018)

MiTasol said:


> It would have been a cakewalk for the Japanese.


A landing would be perhaps, but after that, so long as Australians don't leave anything useful, keeping an army supplied 6,000 miles away is a problem. Do they use convoys for 6,000 miles or just leave their supply ships on their own?


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## Smokey Stover (May 1, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> I believe that question persists because the United States, with it's vast food supply and mass manufacturing ability, was able to provide much needed materials to it's allies in order to defeat the Axis.
> 
> I can honestly say that I have never seen someone ask "What if Mexico never entered the war?" or "How would Britain fare against Germany if Brazil never declared war?".
> The fact is, that the U.S. did provide crucial materials that provided an impact in nearly every theater of the war - even if their military forces were not directly involved.
> ...


Well at least you can admit that industrial might alone doesnt mean a victory is assured. As much as it grieves me to say it, if any country was responsible for defeating the bulk/cream of the German armed forces it was Russia. I dont have the facts or numerous of the top of my head but the majority of Germany were defeated in the east long before American, Britain and Canada even set foot on the continent. And there manufacturing ability far eclipsed what the US was able to produce and under severe military strain too. Not matter what one might think of Russia, they were able to absorb and eventually turn the tide in the east to become to pursuers instead of the pursued.....

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## swampyankee (May 1, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> I believe that question persists because the United States, with it's vast food supply and mass manufacturing ability, was able to provide much needed materials to it's allies in order to defeat the Axis.
> 
> I can honestly say that I have never seen someone ask "What if Mexico never entered the war?" or "How would Britain fare against Germany if Brazil never declared war?".
> The fact is, that the U.S. did provide crucial materials that provided an impact in nearly every theater of the war - even if their military forces were not directly involved.
> ...




The US economy was, in the 1930s, even with the depression about 20 to 25% of the World GDP. The data I have seen place its war production ahead of any other single country. Because it wasn’t at war with any neighbors, it was able to purchase goods from them and didn’t need to use significant resources to “guard its back.”

That said, I think that it’s likely Japan would not have attacked the DEI or Malaya were the US to remain neutral, as these were the result of US refusal to accept Japanese aggression in China. On the other hand, even the most isolationist of US ideologues limited that disdain for foreign involvement to Europe: Japan was the Yellow Peril which must be resisted.


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## MiTasol (May 1, 2018)

pbehn said:


> A landing would be perhaps, but after that, so long as Australians don't leave anything useful, keeping an army supplied 6,000 miles away is a problem. Do they use convoys for 6,000 miles or just leave their supply ships on their own?



They would have used the supply ships to take back to Japan the food etc that Aus was sending to the UK.

The bloody wharfies would no doubt have willingly loaded the Japanese ships, something they refused to do for so many ships taking food and supplies to Aus troops in war zones.

I very much doubt that many Aussies would have destroyed crops, herds or flocks or anything else useful. Many of the unions were more pro German/Japanese than pro allies and would not have damaged anything even if the government had told them to.

Even now the government is maintaining its hypocrisy and the double standards one expects from our politicians of all stripes - and it is not the same brand who were in power in ww2. This bunch have sold the port of Darwin to the Chinese but are all uptight about a smaller pacific nation possibly allowing the Chinese navy port access.

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## HealzDevo (May 1, 2018)

The fact remains though that even if you delay US entry into WW2 some aspects of the result will change. It is presented as a fact that the US would have got involved in 1941 which simply is not entirely true. America was largely poised between those that wanted world involvement and isolation. For some even Lend Lease was a slippery slope that was unwanted. The show Star Trek has an episode (I think it is called Broken Mirror) which assumes a reality where the peace protestors won, although we don't know what happened in the Pacific in this reality, we know the Germans somehow took parts of the US. Pearl Harbor was the straw that broke the camel's back. Even Roosevelt wasn't entirely certain which path to take himself. I am assuming Japan organizes more of the strategic conquests before going after places like the Phillipines which are not quite as useful...


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## Mungo60 (May 1, 2018)

Maybe another good question would be - What if the US did a Hiroshima on Berlin before the Russians got there ? Sorry if im breaking topic, tell me to shut up if im being ignorant here.


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## Shortround6 (May 1, 2018)

Smokey Stover said:


> I dont have the facts or numerous of the top of my head but the majority of Germany were defeated in the east long before American, Britain and Canada even set foot on the continent. And *there manufacturing ability far eclipsed what the US was able to produce* and under severe military strain too.




The bolded part is not correct. The Russians did do a tremendous amount to defeat the Germans but it was done with blood and not by out producing the US.
The US built roughly twice the number of aircraft that the Russians did. The Russians did very little ship building (nothing over 1000 tons completed during the war? war for the Russians starting in June of 1941) Russian tank production was high but truck production was not great.

Russia achieved High tank and artillery production by strictly limiting production in other areas, like railroad rail and locomotives.

A fair amount of Russian mass production was actually dependent on Lend-Lease supplies like steel, copper, aluminium and assorted alloying agents/materials. 
Not To mention thousands of machine tools.


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## Shortround6 (May 1, 2018)

HealzDevo said:


> The fact remains though that even if you delay US entry into WW2 some aspects of the result will change. It is presented as a fact that the US would have got involved in 1941 which simply is not entirely true. America was largely poised between those that wanted world involvement and isolation. For some even Lend Lease was a slippery slope that was unwanted. The show Star Trek has an episode (I think it is called Broken Mirror) which assumes a reality where the peace protestors won, although we don't know what happened in the Pacific in this reality, we know the Germans somehow took parts of the US. Pearl Harbor was the straw that broke the camel's back. Even Roosevelt wasn't entirely certain which path to take himself. I am assuming Japan organizes more of the strategic conquests before going after places like the Phillipines which are not quite as useful...



The US had been gearing up for several years, delaying US entry hurts in some ways and helps in others. I have mentioned the US fleet expansion. 
For the AAF Please remember that on Sept 13th 1940 they had placed an order for 773 P-47s. Hundreds of P-38s were on order and production lines for the B-17, B-24, B-25 and B-26 had already been built, in some cases multiple production lines. 584 F4Us had been ordered in June of 1941 and Brewster had been sighned up as a 2nd source on Nov 1st 1941.
The avalanche of American production was coming. Delaying firing the opening shots for 3-6 months is not going to affect the production of war materials in 1942 a whole lot. It does give the US time to replace the most obsolete aircraft in the Philippines, provide extra aircraft and better facilities/logistics. 

Japan *cannot* bypass the Philippines leaving an increasingly hostile US presence astride the new supply routes. 

What is the US reaction going to be when, after the US places the oil embargo on Japan for their actions in China, if Japan invades the Dutch East Indies to seize the oil fields there to get around the embargo?

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## swampyankee (May 1, 2018)

American isolationism was mostly directed against involvement in Europe. I suspect many isolationists found it much easier to tolerate Germany’s aggression, even murder of civilians, than similar aggression by Japan, even were the Japanese awarded prized by the IRC for kindness to civilians.


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## pbehn (May 1, 2018)

Please don't forget that Japan attacked the UK at the same time as Pearl Harbour, in the same way.


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## mikewint (May 1, 2018)

On 23 March 1942, the Australian government recalled *Lieutenant General Sir Thomas Blamey from the Middle East to be Commander-in-Chief of the Australian Military Forces*. Blamey was appointed Land Forces Commander under MacArthur.

On 3 April 1942, MacArthur received from the Joint-Chiefs-of-Staff in Washington a directive concerning the conduct of the war in the South-West Pacific. MacArthur was specifically directed to include on his staff senior Australian military officers. He defied the direction by appointing only Americans as his staff officers. By defying the order from his superiors, he deprived himself of advice from Australian generals with actual experience in the conduct of war. In the subsequent bloody fighting on the island of New Guinea, the absence of experienced Australian military advisers on MacArthur's staff would be reflected in poor planning and intelligence gathering, near panic-stricken responses to surprise moves by the Japanese, and unrealistic demands by MacArthur and his staff on field commanders.

*Curtin was aware that MacArthur had defied his own superiors by excluding Australians from his staff, but he made no protest to Washington.* It appears likely that Curtin's acquiescence was prompted by his overwhelming relief that the United States had come to Australia's aid, and a desire not to appear ungrateful.

On 18 April 1942, General MacArthur formally assumed command of the Australian armed forces. At this time, MacArthur commanded 100,000 members of the 2nd AIF, 265,000 Australian Militia, and 38,000 Americans.

On 25 April, MacArthur issued his first directive as Supreme Commander in Australia: Allied Land Forces were to prevent any Japanese landing on the north-east coast of Australia or on the south coast of the island of New Guinea. Although the directive appeared to recognize the strategic importance of Port Moresby and the vulnerability of northern Australia to increased aerial bombardment and invasion if it were to be captured by the Japanese, *MacArthur and Blamey took no immediate steps to fortify Port Moresby or reinforce with battle-toughened AIF troops the poorly armed and inadequately trained militia garrisons in New Guinea.*This inexcusable neglect of the defense of Port Moresby by MacArthur and Blamey becomes even more difficult to understand in the light of evidence that the Japanese and the Commander-in-Chief of the United States Pacific Fleet, Admiral Chester Nimitz, were well aware of the strategic importance of Port Moresby.

At Port Moresby, Major General Basil Morris was in command of the 30th Australian Infantry Brigade, a militia formation comprising the 39th, 49th and 53rd Australian Infantry Battalions. With the exception of the 53rd Battalion, the militia were led by experienced AIF officers and NCOs, but they were only raw recruits with an average age of eighteen. In addition to the Australian militia units, General Morris also had troops of the local Papuan Infantry Battalion (PIB) and the local New Guinea Volunteer Rifles (NGVR). The troops of the NGVR, all European and numbering about 450, were spread thinly across areas of the Australian Territory of New Guinea not occupied by the Japanese. The fortifications of Port Moresby in April 1942 comprised two ancient naval guns, a field artillery regiment, a heavy anti-aircraft battery, and a few mobile anti-aircraft guns.
Having finally been made aware of the seriousness of the Japanese threat to Port Moresby by the Battle of the Coral Sea (7-8 May 1942), MacArthur requested additional Australian troops to bolster the weak defenses of Port Moresby. 
On 15 May 1942, Blamey assigned another militia formation, the 14th Australian Infantry Brigade. The failure of the two senior commanders to send seasoned AIF troops to New Guinea at the earliest opportunity could have had disastrous consequences for Australia when elite, battle-hardened Japanese troops began their determined drive along the Kokoda Track towards Port Moresby in August 1942. It was only then that MacArthur and Blamey appear to have appreciated the danger to which their neglect had exposed Australia, and they rushed seasoned AIF troops of the 7th Division to New Guinea.

When the heavily outnumbered and poorly supplied Australian AIF and militia troops could not initially stem the determined Japanese advance along the Kokoda Track towards Port Moresby, MacArthur and Blamey were severely criticized for their neglect to provide adequate defenses for Port Moresby and the heavy loss of Australian lives on the Kokoda Track which resulted from that neglect.

It was at this point that MacArthur quickly shifted the blame for his mistakes to troops under his command, and he announced his view that the Australian troops on the Kokoda Track were poor fighters who were retreating from a smaller number of Japanese troops. In fact the Australian troops were outnumbered by at least five to one by elite Japanese troops, and MacArthur and Blamey had sent them into action without adequate arms or supplies. *General Blamey supported MacArthur's lie to excuse his own neglect of Australia's northern defenses and her soldiers.* He ignored the overwhelming strength of the Japanese invasion force and the grave supply problems faced by Australian troops on the Kokoda Track. To his everlasting discredit, he blamed the fighting qualities of the Australian troops and their field commanders for their failure initially to stem the Japanese drive towards Port Moresby.

On the other hand, it must be acknowledged that Australia did receive a real benefit from MacArthur's appointment as Supreme Commander, South West Pacific Area, with his headquarters in Australia. MacArthur’s obsession with recovering the Philippines from the Japanese worked to Australia's great advantage because it was necessary first to oust the Japanese from the island of New Guinea, and MacArthur was a powerful advocate in Washington for his command in Australia to receive the military resources necessary to achieve both tasks.


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## Smokey Stover (May 1, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> The bolded part is not correct. The Russians did do a tremendous amount to defeat the Germans but it was done with blood and not by out producing the US.
> The US built roughly twice the number of aircraft that the Russians did. The Russians did very little ship building (nothing over 1000 tons completed during the war? war for the Russians starting in June of 1941) Russian tank production was high but truck production was not great.
> 
> Russia achieved High tank and artillery production by strictly limiting production in other areas, like railroad rail and locomotives.
> ...



Im sorry i just dont buy that about lend lease. Infact whenever this subject comes up the only argument for the US thats ever made is about lend lease. Do you know how long the war had been going on before a single ship reached Russia or even Britain for that matter. Roosevelt was no. 1 concerned with appeasing his people so they would re-elect him and if Europe went to hell before that happened well then so be it. Also have you any idea how much tonnage of lend lease equipment was sunk or lost during the arctic conveys? Not to mention the price Britain had to pay for lend lease equipment ensured the quick demise of the empire so a new superpower could emerge. Ie America. But im not blaming the US. I blame Churchill for spending all his time and energy trying to drag America into the war when we had repelled the German airforce completely alone. The main was nothing more than a drunk, a warmonger, an opportunist who sent thousands of young men to their deaths over two world wars. Some see him as a hero, i see him as the reason Britain invented everything and gave it away.


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## pbehn (May 1, 2018)

Smokey Stover said:


> Im sorry i just dont buy that about lend lease. Infact whenever this subject comes up the only argument for the US thats ever made is about lend lease. Do you know how long the war had been going on before a single ship reached Russia or even Britain for that matter. Roosevelt was no. 1 concerned with appeasing his people so they would re-elect him and if Europe went to hell before that happened well then so be it. Also have you any idea how much tonnage of lend lease equipment was sunk or lost during the arctic conveys? Not to mention the price Britain had to pay for lend lease equipment ensured the quick demise of the empire so a new superpower could emerge. Ie America.


In June 1941, within weeks of the German invasion of the USSR, the first British aid convoy set off along the dangerous Arctic sea route to Murmansk, arriving in September. It carried 40 Hawker Hurricanes along with 550 mechanics and pilots of No. 151 Wing to provide immediate air defence of the port and to train Soviet pilots. The convoy was the first of many convoys to Murmansk and Archangelsk in what became known as the Arctic convoys, the returning ships carried the gold that the USSR was using to pay the US.

By the end of 1941, early shipments of Matilda, Valentine and Tetrarch tanks represented only 6.5% of total Soviet tank production but over 25% of medium and heavy tanks produced for the Red Army.[48][49] The British tanks first saw action with the 138 Independent Tank Battalion in the Volga Reservoir on 20 November 1941.[50] Lend-Lease tanks constituted 30 to 40 percent of heavy and medium tank strength before Moscow at the beginning of December 1941.[51][52]






British Mk III 'Valentine' destroyed in the Soviet Union, January 1944.
Significant numbers of British Churchill, Matilda and Valentine tanks were shipped to the USSR.[53]


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## Shortround6 (May 1, 2018)

Smokey Stover said:


> Im sorry i just dont buy that about lend lease. Infact whenever this subject comes up the only argument for the US thats ever made is about lend lease. Do you know how long the war had been going on before a single ship reached Russia or even Britain for that matter. Roosevelt was no. 1 concerned with appeasing his people so they would re-elect him and if Europe went to hell before that happened well then so be it. Also have you any idea how much tonnage of lend lease equipment was sunk or lost during the arctic conveys?



OK, educate me, tell me how many ships were sunk bringing supplies into Vladivostok, or how many were sunk on the Iran route?

Tell me when the first US supplies (not British) reached Russia?

Browse the list here:
Complete List of Lend Lease to Russia including atomic materials

Now is this list a lie or is it true (subject to clerical errors) and if it is true please explain how the Russians didn't need these materials as they were doing so well producing things on their own.

excerpts.
Aluminum & alloys, ingots, slabs, etc. 366,73S,204 lbs
Aluminum plates, sheets, strips 124,052,618 lbs.
Brass &c bronze ingots 10,214,064 lbs
Brass & bronze bars, rods, etc. 66,329,462 lbs.
Copper wire, bare 28,235,738 lbs.
Copper wire, rubber-covered 16,521,612 lbs.
Drills, etc., metal cutting, power-driven 7,822,2l6
Steel bars, cold finished 425,331,742 tons
Boiler tubes, seemless 157,231,260 lbs.
Turret lathes 3,073
Lathes 2,644
Electric welding rods & wire 24,264,316 lbs.


the last is over 12,000 tons of welding rod/wire. Want to tell me how the Russians were going to make all those welded tanks without welding wire?
Or did the Russians just use their own and stock pile this stuff in warehouses?

The Russian workers did near miracles in poorly heated factories on near starvation diets (also helped with lend lease See list of food stuffs like 
Pork, pickled, salted, fresh,frozen 529,814,747 lbs.) but even the Russians cannot make tanks and planes with their bare hands out of rocks and trees.


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## pbehn (May 1, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> Tell me when the first US supplies (not British) reached Russia?
> .


I only mentioned the first British shipment because the tanks actually got to Moscow before Adolf


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## parsifal (May 1, 2018)

MiTasol said:


> And the fact that Australia had no fighters to defend the country is an even bigger factor.
> 
> Australias front line fighter was the Hawker Demon.
> 
> ...



_And the fact that Australia had no fighters to defend the country is an even bigger factor._
It was a factor but not a critical one. The numbers of fighters the IJN could spare in its land based formations for the whole of the Pacific (not SEAC area) was 25 front line Zekes at Rabaul and Lae and about 40 A5Ms in the Marshalls and Marianas. The forces at Rabaul increased somewhat after the fall of Singapore and the PI, but substantial portions of the JAAF were returned to their original billets in China .


The japanese rapidly succumbed to over reach in the early days of the war, and their logistics broke down almost from the start, with virtually no effective interference from the US forces to affect that logistic situation

_Australias front line fighter was the Hawker Demon._

No, incorrect, it was in fact the buffalo. Surviving demons were relegated to training from before the war. We also had some squadrons of P-40s operating in the middle east

If the US had failed to join the ABDA alliance in 1941, you cannot validly assume that things would stay as historical. They wouldn’t. The Australian joint chiefs were already proposing at least 10 squadrons of fighters for home defence, preferring to equip with hawker Hurricanes. This came to nothing, but ther was no panic initially because of assurances given by the Americans primarily 1940 and 41. We cut back on our aircraft development and production as a result.

Had the US not joined ABDA and not given guranteesto provide materiel to Australia in the lead up to war, we would not just have sat there and let it all happen. We had contingency plans to commence production of a home produced fighter. Our options were limited by engine at the time, but it was functional, and ultimately was the adaption of the wirraway, which became the boomerang. This home produced fighter concept was first mooted in 1940, historically nothing was done for over a year and then in the panic of late 1941 a fighter adaptation was made ready in just 6 weeks. This would have happened in late 1940 if the US was tardy in joining the collective defence arrangements. We would have had about 300-400 fighters by December 1941, not including the likely MTO recalls.

We would also have had a substantial bomber force, in the form of an accelerated beaufort program and planned service delivery of the CA4 bomber. 

_They only bought 64 to start with back in February 1934 and by Pearl Harbor at least 27 were written off or converted to mechanical training schools.

So at best 37 Demons to defend against hundreds of Oscars and Zeros.

And a handful of Wirraway trainers - which outperformed the Demons anyway._

See corrections above.

As for the Army, it was far more modern and up to date but all in England and the Middle East, little more than training facilities in Aus itself.

That would include CMF formations like the 39th bn which fought in the Owen stanleys. They were referred to as “chocos”…..chocolate soldiers…..and I can see that some old myths and prejudices linger on to this day. Please be aware that nearly all of the 5 divs eventually committed to front line combat during the war proved themselves superior to nearly every other nation’s forces that they either fought alongside or against.

In 1941 many of these formations were short of equipment, because such equipment had been shipped off to the MTO. Our home production of military equipment was being grossly underutilized prior to December ’41. A refusal by the americans in 1941 would almost certainly lead to a 70% increase in outputs….provided the money for a switchover to a full war footing could be found. The scenario would almost certainly see all four AIF formations deployed back into Australi and the 5 CMF formation much better equipped. It is entirely possible even that the armoured division would have been equipped 

_It would have been a cakewalk for the Japanese_

Not really. They certainly didn’t think so.

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## parsifal (May 1, 2018)

MiTasol said:


> They would have used the supply ships to take back to Japan the food etc that Aus was sending to the UK.
> 
> The bloody wharfies would no doubt have willingly loaded the Japanese ships, something they refused to do for so many ships taking food and supplies to Aus troops in war zones.
> 
> ...



You need to read up on the Fortress Australia plans. Australia was firmly united, including its waterside workers, and the Japanese would simply not have the logistics....the trains, the MT, the port capacities, to "ship" nonexistent supplies back to japan.

There simply is not the lift capacity in the Japanese merchant fleet to transport and maintain an expeditionary force of that size and maintain it at that distance. moreover, once they get ashore, there would be a rapid slow down in the offensive due to a shortage of MT. The best parrallel I can think of is the Axis operations in NA. Over 30000 trucks were employed to keep something like 3 divs supplied to combat readiness standard. and the distances from their PEs to the front lines was a fraction of those facing the Japanese. The IJA didnt have 30000 trucks to pour into the campaign, sne they didnt have the rolling stock or the rail gauge conversion capability to set up an effective railnet There are multiple track gauges in northern australi, set up from the 1880s as a defensive measure against a possible Russian and later Japanese aggression. 

It would not have been a walk in the park

Frankly you don't know what you are talking about.

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## swampyankee (May 1, 2018)

Mungo60 said:


> Maybe another good question would be - What if the US did a Hiroshima on Berlin before the Russians got there ? Sorry if im breaking topic, tell me to shut up if im being ignorant here.



The nazis were the original target of the Manhattan Project, but they lost too quickly. 

-------------------

Back to Australia: I believe one should note that groups like dock workers were frequently more resistant to foreign invasion than, say, police.


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## GrauGeist (May 1, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> ...The Russian workers did near miracles in poorly heated factories on near starvation diets (also helped with lend lease See list of food stuffs like
> Pork, pickled, salted, fresh,frozen 529,814,747 lbs.) but even the Russians cannot make tanks and planes with their bare hands out of rocks and trees.


Don't forget "Roosevelt Sausage" which the Russians loved.


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## pbehn (May 1, 2018)

swampyankee said:


> The nazis were the original target of the Manhattan Project, but they lost too quickly.
> 
> .


Couldn't possibly be making the bomb took longer than expected could it?

If the Japanese attacked Australia they would have to attack the RN fleet as they did in Dec 1941, that means they would never be able to make a surprise attack on Pearl Harbour and would have supply their army waiting for an attack upon them.


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## Shortround6 (May 1, 2018)

I am just wondering how much of a _cake walk_ it would be to *walk* from Cairns/Townsville to Sydney (let alone Melbourne) in the Australian summer? 

Modern map, I don't know how many of these roads didn't exist in 1941 or were tracks in the sand once you got more than few hours from the coast.

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## buffnut453 (May 1, 2018)

The Japanese trying to invade and take over Australia is the Pacific Theatre equivalent of the German invasion of the Soviet Union. There's just too much there to occupy it all, and too many opportunities for the Allies to strike back with either regular or irregular forces...or both. It would have been a strategic disaster for Japan (not that starting the war in the first place was a great strategic success for them...!).


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## GrauGeist (May 1, 2018)

Good perspective, SR.
Taking Australia would be much like Japan trying to invade the west coast of North America.
Aside from military and civil resistance, they would have to deal with the topography, and while the Sierras and Cascades are not completely impossible, the Rockies would be.
Also consider that moving inland through the Pacific Coastal range, Cascades and Sierras has limited options and virtually all passes provide textbook examples of killing zones.


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## Greg Boeser (May 1, 2018)

parsifal said:


> There simply is not the lift capacity in the Japanese merchant fleet to transport and maintain an expeditionary force of that size and maintain it at that distance. moreover, once they get ashore, there would be a rapid slow down in the offensive due to a shortage of MT. The best parrallel I can think of is the Axis operations in NA. Over 30000 trucks were employed to keep something like 3 divs supplied to combat readiness standard. and the distances from their PEs to the front lines was a fraction of those facing the Japanese. The IJA didnt have 30000 trucks to pour into the campaign, sne they didnt have the rolling stock or the rail gauge conversion capability to set up an effective railnet There are multiple track gauges in northern australi, set up from the 1880s as a defensive measure against a possible Russian and later Japanese aggression.


Let's remember a few facts. 
Japan launched its "Southern Offensive" across a huge expanse of the globe with one objective. To cause, to use a modern term, "shock and awe" to the Allied powers. Quickly gobbling up isolated bases within their sphere of control (Hong Kong, Guam, Wake) and overrunning poorly defended colonial territory in SE Asia, the Allies were to be so demoralized that they would sue for peace. They expected a cakewalk, but reality intervened. In spite of rapid victories in Malaya, Burma and the Philippines, and the rapid seizure of Rabaul, the Japanese quickly found themselves overextended. Resistance at Wake Island delayed the Japanese timetable two weeks and required additional forced to accomplish. Ditto the Philippines, which held out until May and resulted in the commander of the operation being relieved. The surprise attack by the _Lexington_ and _Yorktown _on the Lea-Salamaua landings 10 March, 1942 cost the Japanese three transports critical to further expansion and damage to other ships resulting in a month long delay in launching the Port Moresby operation. Without these critical delays we don't know how much the Japanese could have achieved in severing the lines of communication to the US and UK. Would Australia stand alone against the Japanese if their Allies could not support them? Or would they accept the new status quo? Japan does not have to fight for every inch of Australia, just seize the key ports.

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## buffnut453 (May 1, 2018)

If Japan just seized key ports around Australia, then they'd simply be repeating the same strategic error that characterized the rest of their Pacific campaign: grabbing isolated locations that could not mutually support each other. As happened in the Pacific, the captured ports could be retaken piecemeal as Allied strength increased, and the Japanese forces could do little, if anything, to prevent it because of the distances involved and the lack of sufficient maritime carrying capacity.


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## Shortround6 (May 1, 2018)

Greg Boeser said:


> Let's remember a few facts......................................
> Would Australia stand alone against the Japanese if their Allies could not support them? Or would they accept the new status quo? Japan does not have to fight for every inch of Australia, just seize the key ports.



Define support and provide time table?

The Japanese, if they can act even a month sooner than historically means trying to take Port Moresby in April of 1942 instead of May. This is NOT Dec of 1941 or even January. 

The US had started diverting supply ships/transports intended for the Philippines starting in Dec of 1941 (first ships arrive Brisbane Dec 22) and 4600 men are landed. Granted this is a drop in the bucket and these are hardly seasoned troops. The Australians received some P-40E aircraft in March of 1942 and these were in operation in just two weeks over/around Port Moresby. 

So Australia was hardly alone. 

In the alternate scenario being put forth here the Japanese would somehow ignore the Philippines and send those troops/aircraft/ships to seize Indonesia and Java even sooner. Historically the Japanese didn't attack Java until Feb 28th and it took two weeks to surrender. 

Now please consider in this scenario that many of the ships that arrived in Australia during Dec, Jan and Feb with men and war material would have instead gone as reinforcements to the Philippines. So when the US did join the war you have a sizable naval presence and several hundreds more aircraft sitting astride their new supply routes. 

For the Japanese it is not quite enough to seize just the major ports, the ports are not where the food and raw materials are. they also have to defend the ports against counter strikes from commonwealth forces and the Americans once they finally join the war. The Japanese cannot count on them staying out even in this scenario. None (or very few) of the major ports are within supporting distance of each other and the struggle for the east coast of Australia could resemble the Benghazi Sweepstakes, with advances and counter advances of hundreds of miles as the supplies for each side ebbed and flowed.

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## Graeme (May 1, 2018)

parsifal said:


> Australia was firmly united, including its waterside workers,



Have you seen/heard/read this book Michael? Real eye-opener....


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## Graeme (May 1, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> I am just wondering how much of a _cake walk_ it would be to *walk* from Cairns/Townsville to Sydney (let alone Melbourne) in the Australian summer?



One airman made it from Darwin to Melbourne in 13 days.


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## parsifal (May 2, 2018)

_Japan launched its "Southern Offensive" across a huge expanse of the globe with one objective. To cause, to use a modern term, "shock and awe" to the Allied powers. Quickly gobbling up isolated bases within their sphere of control (Hong Kong, Guam, Wake) and overrunning poorly defended colonial territory in SE Asia, the Allies were to be so demoralized that they would sue for peace. They expected a cakewalk, but reality intervened. In spite of rapid victories in Malaya, Burma and the Philippines, and the rapid seizure of Rabaul, the Japanese quickly found themselves overextended._

Despite a massive build up of resources and supplies in Indochina since September 1940, with just two divisions deployed in Malaya and a further 1.5 divisions in Burma, and a generally supportive regime in Siam (after some initial resistance), the Japanese found their forces in this TO to be seriously short of logistics. The situation and terrain into Burma makes it understandable, but no such reasoning applies in Malaya. The final assault of Singapore was a desperate, close run battle in which the Japanese ran out of fuel outright and very nearly ran out of ammunition. They were short of everything really. If the assault had failed they would have been forced to pull back for re-supply.

Look at the differences in distances It is about 500miles from the Malayan frontier to Singapore…..Its something like 2000 miles from Darwin to Adelaide across a trackless desert. With port capacities in 1941 that were able to unload 1 ship per week on average. In 1942, Darwin was a dusty country town with a population not exceeding 5000 people. It had not the slightest chance of meeting the logistic needs of an army that would easily exceed 1 million men…. 

_Resistance at Wake Island delayed the Japanese timetable two weeks and required additional forced to accomplish. Ditto the Philippines, which held out until May and resulted in the commander of the operation being relieved. The surprise attack by the Lexington and Yorktown on the Lea-Salamaua landings 10 March, 1942 cost the Japanese three transports critical to further expansion and damage to other ships resulting in a month long delay in launching the Port Moresby operation. Without these critical delays we don't know how much the Japanese could have achieved in severing the lines of communication to the US and UK. Would Australia stand alone against the Japanese if their Allies could not support them? Or would they accept the new status quo? Japan does not have to fight for every inch of Australia, just seize the key ports._

During the period of her offensive, the Japanese had the capacity in the PTO to support roughly 2-3 divs on sustained operations. If they switched over to defensive postures, they could support about 10 divs. It takes a lot less to support a units that is on the defensive. In this hypothetical they would need to support 15-20 divs through hostile territory with virtually no supporting infrastructure, relying on ports that were not up to the logistic demands this level of operation would demand, using a transport network that had no hope of supporting such an intensive and large scale operation.

It could be argued that the Japanese might try for an end run to the industrialised southeaster portions of the country. This was considered by the Japanese and the Australian Army and thought most unlikely (by both). Maximum lift capacity would be no more than two divs with (we think) a reinforcement rate of about 1 div per month, which in any case eats seriously into the re-supply of the front line forces. There is a mountain range down the east coast with many choke point that small forces could hold out indefinitely. Movement up and down the coastal plains would have been difficult for a hostile force, with many rivers, few bridges and mountains sometimes extending to the very edge of the coast. An assault directly into a major centre, could be possible. There were really only two options, an assault of Brisbane, or an assault of Sydney/Newcastle or Wollongong. None of these options have very encouraging prospects for a quick occupation. Townsville Bundaberg possibly Gladstone had some port capacities, but nowhere near enough Townsville was the main port of departure for Moresby, and struggled to support an overseas force, mostly unengaged of no more than 50000. And that was while the port was undamaged and under friendly control with all those hostile waterside workers apparently not helping the war effort……. 

The US produced a report after the war that showed that on average, the amount of shipping needed to support a division in the PTO on sustained operations was 20 times that needed to support the same sized formation in the ETO. Im amazed that people are simply so ignorant of these cold hard realities but still want to present themselves as an expert on the pacific. Nimitz famously had a sign hanging behind him that said “Before you even ask, do we have the shipping to consider it!” people would do well to remember that before haring off to make outrageous claims.


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## parsifal (May 2, 2018)

Graeme said:


> Have you seen/heard/read this book Michael? Real eye-opener....
> 
> View attachment 491799
> 
> View attachment 491800




No, but for a while I worked for two ex- waterside workers who were at the centre of this controversy. These two "gentlemen were called Issy wyner and nick Origlass. You can google them if you like.

The alleged shortages and go slows are largely a crock. Not so pre-june 1941, but after that there was an immediate turn around.

It just didn't happen basically.

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## parsifal (May 2, 2018)

You might find the following thesis on this book also helpful

http://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2800&context=lhapapers


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## Graeme (May 2, 2018)

Thanks for that Michael. Interesting!

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## parsifal (May 2, 2018)

Professor Peter Stanley another commentator of colebatches book had these observations (among others) to make

“_Colebatch claims that, had wharfies been less tardy in loading 155 mm guns destined for Milne Bay, the guns ‘could have destroyed the Japanese landing forces before they got ashore’ (p. 13). Perhaps. But Colebatch says that the guns were ordered to be loaded only on 5 September 1942. The Japanese had landed ten days before this. Even if the wharfies had loaded the guns more speedily the guns could not possibly have reached Milne Bay and got into action before the end of the fighting, two days later, on 7 September. Simple chronology demolishes that argument.


Colebatch then makes a meal of the wirelesses used by Sparrow Force in Timor, offering pages of storytelling that turn out to be a fizzer. He claims that wharfies loading the ship that carried the 2/2nd Independent Company to Timor threw the troops’ wireless gear into the hold, damaging it. The 2/2nd arrived in Timor on December 1941, just after the outbreak of the war with Japan. The Japanese landed on Timor late in February 1942 and Sparrow Force had communicated with Australia in the meantime. After the invasion, when Sparrow Force’s survivors were waging a guerilla war in the island’s interior, they had no working wireless and cobbled together a Heath Robinson affair they called ‘Winnie the War Winner’, with which they re-established communications with Australia in April 1942. (This contraption is now on display in what Colebatch wrongly names as the ‘National War Memorial’. Not the only error – he has a ‘Dutch’ commander at Dili, in Portuguese ‘East’ Timor and the 2/2nd Independent Company was not disbanded after its Timor ordeal.)


What has any of this to do with union ‘sabotage’, you ask? Colebatch slyly implies that the wharfies’ rough handling of the 2/2nd’s gear in December resulted in the Independent Company’s isolation after the Japanese invasion. ‘I do not know’, he writes, ‘if there was a direct connection between the fact the watersiders were specifically reported … to have thrown radio sets into the hold and the fact that the commandos had no working radio after the Japanese attack’ (p. 23). But he implies that there was such a connection. Colebatch could not find any Sparrow Force veteran to claim that unionists irreparably damaged the force’s wireless gear. At best ‘not proved’.


Finally, Colebatch claims that a ‘wharf strike in Brisbane’ (undated and undocumented) prevented the 20th Brigade from carrying out a proposed rescue mission to liberate the surviving prisoners of war at Sandakan ‘because there were no heavy weapons’ (p. 4). But the 20th Brigade was never even considered for the proposed rescue mission, Operation ‘Kingfisher’. It was earmarked for the Oboe 2 landings at Balikpapan, which it carried out in July 1945. ‘Kingfisher’ had been outlined, using the 1st Australian Parachute Battalion (which neither had nor needed any ‘heavy weapons’) but was cancelled. The feasibility of ‘Kingfisher’ and the reasons for its cancellation have been vigorously debated among historians of the Borneo campaign but no-one has ever before mentioned the 20th Brigade or a supposed wharf strike as a factor. The usual villain is General Douglas MacArthur, whose headquarters is said to have diverted the necessary transport aircraft to American operations in the Philippines, though the definitive reason remains debatable. Colebatch’s claim adds nothing to the debate about the fate of the Sandakan prisoners. Verdict: irrelevant_”.


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## Smokey Stover (May 2, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> OK, educate me, tell me how many ships were sunk bringing supplies into Vladivostok, or how many were sunk on the Iran route?
> 
> Tell me when the first US supplies (not British) reached Russia?
> 
> ...



Ok, before i have time to read and sort through boxes of stats, you are aware of the amount of aircraft alone the Russians designed and built? Not to mention tanks, including probably the best medium tank of ww2 (T-34) which i might add went into combat as early as 1941. The Russians had at least two to three times the amount of anti aircraft guns and barrage balloons over Moscow than there ever was over London. Anti tank guns, thousands of trucks built or modified for rocket projectiles, full winter clothing equipment, special forces trained soldiers on ski's. Factory after factory taken down brick by brick and transported back behind the lines and out of reach of German planes and re-built with production going on round the clock. All this and more done with Russian built trains/track. As for your comment about ships, because of the German invasion and geography and the fact they weren't fighting in the Pacific makes your claim of sea vessels irrelevant. Not to mention for 3 years the only real allied help they received (apart from US/UK reject aircraft and equipment) all they got was cans of corned beef. To which when opening them, joked "we're opening the second front". I think your doing what most amateur historians do and hold to much faith in paper statistics and possibly misplaced pride. Lend lease or no lend lease, the fact is the US & Britain didnt even land troops on the continent until June 1944. The war for Germany was over by then. And im sorry but anyone who believes lend lease had such a huge impact on Russia defeating Germany is simply deluded. That's like saying without the British giving America radar, code breaking information and piston+jet engine technology was the reason the US won the war in the Pacific. After all, until Britain taught the US how to land F4U's on the decks of actual aircraft carriers they would still have been operating from mud runways in the Pacific island chains. Im all for friendly debate, but dont try to belittle me with a list of metal tubing and statistics that we have no way of actually proving anymore. Do you not have an opinion of your own on this matter or do you just regurgitate stats found on wikipedia......


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## Mungo60 (May 2, 2018)

Some may find these maps interesting:







RAIL in 1943






You can walk from Kokoda to Owens Corner , about 100kms in about 9 days.






Our Main Highway system as it is now, you can now drive around Australia on Tar, most of the time, if there isnt floods, cyclones, bush fires or dust storms, and to put into a bit of perspective I can remember driving from Perth to Melbourne in 1964 in a VW "Beatle", great because it was air cooled, anyway from memory basically the roads from Port Augusta in South Australia going North and West were all dirt, no tar at all, and the axis of the road changed regularly because conditions effected it, water was hard to get unless you dug for it. It used to take us about 2 to 3 days to get to Kalgoorlie and a cold beer, then it was another day or so to get to Perth. So conditions in the 1940's were very basic and sealed roads didnt exist in the Northern approaches. :

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## pbehn (May 2, 2018)

Post D Day, supplying an army across 100 miles of water and having pipe lines for fuel the allies started to hit logistical problems when lines were longer than 100 miles. Antwerp needed to be captured intact to supply the army, it is only 250 miles from the Normandy beaches.


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## Shortround6 (May 2, 2018)

All, I can say is WOW!



Smokey Stover said:


> Ok, before i have time to read and sort through boxes of stats, you are aware of the amount of aircraft alone the Russians designed and built? Not to mention tanks, including probably the best medium tank of ww2 (T-34) which i might add went into combat as early as 1941. The Russians had at least two to three times the amount of anti aircraft guns and barrage balloons over Moscow than there ever was over London. Anti tank guns, thousands of trucks built or modified for rocket projectiles, full winter clothing equipment, special forces trained soldiers on ski's. Factory after factory taken down brick by brick and transported back behind the lines and out of reach of German planes and re-built with production going on round the clock. All this and more done with Russian built trains/track. As for your comment about ships, because of the German invasion and geography and the fact they weren't fighting in the Pacific makes your claim of sea vessels irrelevant. Not to mention for 3 years the only real allied help they received (apart from US/UK reject aircraft and equipment) all they got was cans of corned beef. To which when opening them, joked "we're opening the second front". I think your doing what most amateur historians do and hold to much faith in paper statistics and possibly misplaced pride. Lend lease or no lend lease, the fact is the US & Britain didnt even land troops on the continent until June 1944. The war for Germany was over by then. And im sorry but anyone who believes lend lease had such a huge impact on Russia defeating Germany is simply deluded. That's like saying without the British giving America radar, code breaking information and piston+jet engine technology was the reason the US won the war in the Pacific. After all, until Britain taught the US how to land F4U's on the decks of actual aircraft carriers they would still have been operating from mud runways in the Pacific island chains. Im all for friendly debate, but dont try to belittle me with a list of metal tubing and statistics that we have no way of actually proving anymore. Do you not have an opinion of your own on this matter or do you just regurgitate stats found on wikipedia......



If yo had looked at link you would see it is not from wikipedia............

I see that you like to pick and choose your facts and ignore those that don't suit you. This started with your sentence in post #38


Smokey Stover said:


> And* there manufacturing ability far eclipsed what the US was able to produce* and under severe military strain too.



I am aware of the number of aircraft and the number of different designs the Russians built, but since the number of aircraft is roughly 1/2 of what America produced I would say that Russian production did not *far eclipse *US production, same with tanks, no matter how good the T-34 was or wasn't. The Russians didn't out produce the US in tanks/armored vehicles. 

The Russians did out produce the US in artillery but comparing the number of guns around one city to the number around a different city is hardly a reliable way of estimating total production.

Now we find out that ship production doesn't count as anything (including the steel needed) that the Russians weren't producing will be declared irrelevant. 
Of course the fact that the US needed cargo ships to even get to Europe is also irrelevant? Or the Ships needed to carry the lend-lease supplies?

I guess my geography lessons were totally inadequate too, I also thought that Italy was part of the European continent. Now I find out it isn't, either that or the Allies didn't land at Salerno Until 1944?Let alone Sicily. 

I don't particularly like be belittled with such "facts" 

Might I ask you if you have an opinion of your own or if you are going to follow the old communist party line? 

I would note that lend lease supplies _started _showing up in Iranian ports in Nov 1941 (which means that they were loaded on ships weeks earlier) but would take time to transit Iran into Russia. 

Lend lease supplies also started to show up in Vladivostok in Oct/Nov of 1941. Cash and Carry had started a bit earlier.

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## MiTasol (May 3, 2018)

parsifal said:


> No, incorrect, it was in fact the buffalo.



The first of just *SEVENTEEN *Buffalo's arrived in June 42 http://www.adf-serials.com.au/2a51.htm - 16 weeks after the bombing of Darwin where the air forces stationed in and near the town comprised No. 12 Squadron, which was equipped with *SIX *CAC Wirraway advanced trainers (which had been pressed into service as fighters), and No. 13 Squadron which operated Lockheed Hudson light bombers. Six Hudsons, 3 from No. 2 Squadron and 3 from No. 13 Squadron also arrived at Darwin on 19 February after having been evacuated from Timor. *None of the six Wirraways at Darwin on the day of the raid were serviceable*. At the time of the event the town's civil defences were dysfunctional to say the least with the RAAFs base commander telling the Intelligence Officer that the Japanese did not have the capacity to bomb Darwin - that was after the Intelligence Officer told the CO that the Japanese were only an hour away. The Lowe Commission, which was appointed to investigate the raids shortly after they occurred, was informed that the Australian military estimated that Darwin would have needed 36 heavy anti-aircraft guns and 250 fighter aircraft to defend it against a raid of the scale which occurred on 19 February. In addition to the Australian forces, ten USAAC Curtiss P-40 Warhawks were passing through Darwin en route to Java on the day of the attack. *The RAAF even had at least 116 P-40 Kittyhawks in service before the Buffalo's arrived. http://www.adf-serials.com.au/2a29b.htm*



parsifal said:


> _If the US had failed to join the ABDA alliance in 1941, you cannot validly assume that things would stay as historical. They wouldn’t. The Australian joint chiefs were already proposing at least 10 squadrons of fighters for home defence, preferring to equip with hawker Hurricanes. _*Another out of date aircraft, probably they were planning on obtaining the RAFs leftovers as when the RAF replaced the worn out Hurricanes with Spitfires.*
> 
> _This came to nothing, but there was no panic initially because of assurances given by the Americans primarily 1940 and 41. We cut back on our aircraft development and production as a result._ * I find nothing in Australian archives to support that claim regarding either Wirraways or Beaufort production ever being cut back at any stage pre 1943. I do have the Wirraway fighter file at home but will have to find it to determine if there was any delay to that program but I very much doubt it.*
> 
> ...


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## parsifal (May 3, 2018)

From the RAAF Historical reference page:
"The Brewster F2A-1 was test-flown in January 1938, and was the first monoplane fighter used by the US Navy. Improved versions, including the F2A-2 and -3 were purchased as Buffaloes in 1940 by Finland, Belgium and England. The RAF found that the Buffalo, with its large, rotund fuselage and underpowered engine, had many operational limitations and was unsuitable for the European war theatre.

As a result, the Buffaloes were transferred to the Far East where a number of these aircraft were taken over by the two RAAF fighter units in Malaya – Nos 21 and 453 Squadrons. At the outbreak of Japanese hostilities, the RAAF, RAF, and RNZAF Buffaloes, supported by Dutch Buffaloes, fought gallantly but were out-classed and outnumbered by the Japanese Zeros".

Where do you think these aircraft would deply to if the ABDA treaty had not been signed? Or is okay to think 'alternate history" for the Japanese and not the allies. A kind of Axis wet dream for the ra ra boys?

(from wiki)

*RAAF units formed under Australian operational control January 1942*


No. 1 Squadron RAAF
No. 2 Squadron RAAF
No. 3 Squadron RAAF
No. 4 Squadron RAAF
No. 5 Squadron RAAF
No. 6 Squadron RAAF
No. 7 Squadron RAAF
No. 8 Squadron RAAF
No. 9 Squadron RAAF
No. 10 Squadron RAAF
No. 11 Squadron RAAF
No. 12 Squadron RAAF
No. 13 Squadron RAAF
No. 14 Squadron RAAF
No. 15 Squadron RAAF
No. 20 Squadron RAAF
No. 21 Squadron RAAF
No. 22 Squadron RAAF
No. 23 Squadron RAAF
No. 24 Squadron RAAF
No. 25 Squadron RAAF
No. 26 Squadron RAAF
No. 27 Squadron RAAF
No. 28 Squadron RAAF
No. 29 Squadron RAAF
No. 30 Squadron RAAF
No. 31 Squadron RAAF
No. 32 Squadron RAAF
No. 33 Squadron RAAF
No. 34 Squadron RAAF
No. 35 Squadron RAAF
No. 36 Squadron RAAF
No. 37 Squadron RAAF
No. 38 Squadron RAAF
No. 40 Squadron RAAF
No. 41 Squadron RAAF
No. 42 Squadron RAAF
No. 43 Squadron RAAF
No. 60 Squadron RAAF
No. 66 Squadron RAAF
No. 67 Squadron RAAF
No. 68 (Reserve) Squadron RAAF - Reconnaissance based at Kojarena, WA - flew Avro Ansons[1]
No. 69 (Reserve) Squadron RAAF - Reconnaissance based at Georgina, WA - flew Avro Ansons
No. 71 Squadron RAAF
No. 73 Squadron RAAF
No. 75 Squadron RAAF
No. 76 Squadron RAAF
No. 77 Squadron RAAF
No. 78 Squadron RAAF
No. 79 Squadron RAAF
No. 80 Squadron RAAF
No. 82 Squadron RAAF
No. 83 Squadron RAAF
No. 84 Squadron RAAF
No. 85 Squadron RAAF
No. 86 Squadron RAAF
No. 87 Squadron RAAF
No. 92 Squadron RAAF
No. 93 Squadron RAAF
No. 94 Squadron RAAF
No. 99 Squadron RAAF
No. 100 Squadron RAAF
No. 102 Squadron RAAF
No. 107 Squadron RAAF
No. 292 Squadron RAAF
*RAAF Empire Air Training Scheme Squadrons*

_See also: Article XV squadrons_


No. 450 Squadron RAAF
No. 451 Squadron RAAF
No. 452 Squadron RAAF
No. 453 Squadron RAAF
No. 454 Squadron RAAF
No. 455 Squadron RAAF
No. 456 Squadron RAAF
No. 457 Squadron RAAF
No. 458 Squadron RAAF
No. 459 Squadron RAAF
No. 460 Squadron RAAF
No. 461 Squadron RAAF
No. 462 Squadron RAAF
No. 463 Squadron RAAF
No. 464 Squadron RAAF
No. 466 Squadron RAAF
No. 467 Squadron RAAF
*Joint RAAF-Netherlands East Indies Squadrons*


No. 18 (NEI) Squadron (bomber)
No. 19 (NEI) Squadron (transport/communications)
No. 119 (NEI) Squadron (bomber)
No. 120 (NEI) Squadron (fighter)
Or are we going to assume that Australia would continue to move blithely on, providing units for empire defence when its own shores were under threat? on what basis could we reasonably assume that......none at this stage. Even some basic research would quickly reveal that Australia only reluctantly agreed to the overseas deployments of its forces AFTER gurantees had been secured from both the americans and the british, with the dutch as well. Any part of that collective security arrangement left missing was likely to affect the Australian respopnses to empire defences and further encourage our defence planners to initiate home production initiatives. did we have the capacity to equipourselves in the absence of US commitment, or in the case of a temporary US withdrawal from theatre? yes we could.


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## parsifal (May 3, 2018)

A valid issue might be to consider the implications of the 1940 presidential election going differently....

https://www.quora.com/Would-America...t-if-Wendell-Wilkie-had-won-the-1940-election


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## MiTasol (May 3, 2018)

parsifal said:


> _You need to read up on the Fortress Australia plans. _ *The fortress Australia plan was a pipe dream depending on Australia having hundreds of fully serviceable combat aircraft and fully trained troops before Japan arrived. The bombing raids on Darwin and Broome showed that the defences did not exist and we could not even maintain what few aircraft we had. We were so incompetent that we sent the Beauforts to Singapore with no guns and no bomb racks.*
> 
> _Australia was firmly united, including its waterside workers, _*Yes - so united that on the day Darwin was bombed the wharfies were on strike refusing to load ships with supplies the Australian, Dutch and US military desperately needed to fight the Japanese just a few hundred miles north of Darwin - and they refused to load military goods on ships for various reasons throughout the war*_. _*In Darwin, if the wharfies had not been on strike when the Japanese arrived, the number of ships and tons of cargo sunk would have been lower as the ships would have been on the water or at sea. Also many of those desperately needed military supplies, which were in very short supply, which burned on the docks would have been on the water or at sea. Ships on the water are manouverable and several of those on the water were able to escape. Ships tied to the wharf are stationary targets *
> 
> ...


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## MiTasol (May 3, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> Good perspective, SR.
> Taking Australia would be much like Japan trying to invade the west coast of North America.
> Aside from military and civil resistance, they would have to deal with the topography, and while the Sierras and Cascades are not completely impossible, the Rockies would be.
> Also consider that moving inland through the Pacific Coastal range, Cascades and Sierras has limited options and virtually all passes provide textbook examples of killing zones.



Taking Australia in early 1942 would have been much easier than taking just California in the USA - the population of California was roughly double the population of the whole of Australia. It had more military bases than Australia, far far more modern military aircraft and fully trained military aviators than Australia, more army personnel than Australia and the US Navy in California probably outnumbered the whole RAN world wide by at least 5 to 1.

Terrain wise the highest mountain in Australia is just 2,228m/ 7,310ft and the highest in Queensland is just 1,622 m/ 5,322ft. The vast majority of the country is moderately flat with a few small mountain ranges, nothing like the Pacific Coastal range, Cascades and Sierras, or the much worse PNG terrain, though the temperatures in January February can be savage, 40C/100F is not unusual. There was not a lot of large timber and that is confined to a narrow coastal fringe. Flooding in Cairns at that time of year is always a major risk. The inland roads from Brisbane to Canberra are far more flat than anything - the only steep section being in the first 100km/60m out of Brisbane.

*On Jan 1 1942 *the front line fighter *on Australian soil *was the the Hawker Demon (or the Wirraway trainer - take your pick). There were Buffaloes in Singapore but they were on loan from the RAF, and none made it to Australia.
There were 150 odd Hudson's in Australia by Jan 1 and they had been in service long enough to be an effective weapon. 
There were a hand full of Beauforts in service, actually at that stage still officially in RAF ownership but flown by Australians and not capable of combat operations as demonstrated by the Singapore Beaufort debacle weeks earlier.

The Army was mainly reserve forces and trainees being trained to fight in the Middle East, not Australia or PNG. They did a fantastic job in PNG, even before the ME troops arrived back in the pacific but they would have been outclassed by battle hardened Japanese veterans before that.

If the Japanese had attacked Cairns, Townsville and Brisbane instead of Rabaul, Lae and the Owen Stanleys in PNG in January 1942 NE Australia would have fallen quickly and the critical bases that the Americans created in Aus starting March 42 would have been in Japanese hands.

Before the Battle of the Coral Sea (May 42) and Midway (June 42) the Japanese had almost total control of the SW Pacific ocean and the crack troops sent to PNG would have cleaned up Australia quickly. They could easily have taken Canberra from Brisbane and set up their version of a Vichy government. There would have been resistance, like in France, etc, but for while the shock of invasion would have allowed the Japanese to consolidate and the brutallity of their rule would have made the majority compliant, again like France, etc.
In the long run America would still have pushed the Japanese out of the SW Pacific but to claim the Australia could have survived on its own at that stage is pure fairy tale.
Australia's first modern combat fighters were the P-40s that arrived in March 42 and were supplied under lend lease. 

Until the Japanese Navy was thrashed in the Coral Sea and Midway Australia was a very soft target. Thank the gods they went for PNG instead of Australia.


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## parsifal (May 3, 2018)

*Another out of date aircraft, probably they were planning *

Nothing wrong with the hurricanes in secondary TOs like the PTO, the MTO or USSR. The majority of fighters fielded by japan through much of 1941 and into 1942 remained the Ki27 and A5M. Against the Oscar and Zeke they would have struggled, but no more really than the P-40 . as they were in PNG the superior Zekes would have been overwhelmed by three issues, only moreso in the context of an invasion of Australia, long range bombing and counterstrikes, overwhelming numbers and a failing logistics network. There is no magic wand to say things are any better in Australia for the Japanese than they would be in PNG. Much worse in fact. 

*I find nothing in Australian archives to support that claim regarding either Wirraways or Beaufort production ever being cut back at any stage pre 1943. I do have the Wirraway fighter file at home but will have to find it to determine if there was any delay to that program but I very much doubt it.*

Beaforts were selected for production in July 1939. More than 600 firms were lined up for sub assembly and
A major production facility was set up and manned. Everything was basically ready by the latter part of 1940, but the british engine embargo stuffed the whole program up. Major redesign was needed to fit the Twin wasp as a substitute, but Australian govt approached these negotiations at a very leisurely pace. It was December 1941 before headway in this direction began to show results. I do not believe the Australians were pushing this licence as hard as they could have, this is certainly suggested in Horners book.

I wasn’t considering the Wirraway actually. I was thinking more the CA4/CA11

*But we just sit there and did let it happen *_- *example w*_*here were the 250 fighters that were needed to defend Darwin, that is twenty squadrons worth. As you said *

That’s rubbish and you know it. Australia committed itself to empire defence, sending more than a full group to Malaya, committing 4 sqns to the Middle East and manning about 10 sqns in Europe _. _We provided substantial resources to the EATS scheme her in Australia amounting to over 500 training aircraft in 1941 alone. In 1939, before the empire training scheme came into effect and before Italy entered the war, there were plans to expand _Australian _home defences to over 20 sqns from memory, with a further 6 sqns for defences in Malaya. Thigs did change, but if they change to the extent of the US not being there, do you think it reasonable to assume nothing else would change on the allied side? 

*Which did not happen until well after Pearl Harbour and Darwin.*
rubbish. We were sending our best (which wasn’t very good……) to Malaya and the middle east and spending our treasure on building up the ETO forces via the EATS scheme

*First flight 29 May 1942, fifteen weeks after Darwin which means the six weeks started 9 weeks after Darwin.*
And possible production from late 1940, if the US did not join collective security of the far east. If the alternative is the case primary supplier of aircraft would have to be the US, whi simply would not sit there and let the Japanese run amok
*And what and where were these 300-400 fighters when Darwin was attacked? I am quoting actual history, not some post war revisionist history.* 
no you are not quoting actual history, and your reliance on people like Allan Jones, David Flint, Quadrant and Catchpoles ia not even “revisionist history”. Its more fake history, generated from the far right of present day Australian politics. 

*The Beaufort program was for 90 aircraft for the RAF and then 90 for the RAAF (increased Nov 42 to 450 aircraft total). After Pearl Harbor six or twelve (depending on what source you use) were sent to Singapore - with no guns and no bomb racks. At the fall of Singapore only the RAFs Q flight of 100Sqaudron had Beaufort's so total production by the time Darwin was bombed may have been in the twenties.*

And again, production was ready from October 1940, but failed to commence due to engine issues
. With no US commitment to collective security, it is not unreasonable to assume that the production of the Twin Wasp could have accelerated. The squadrons in the MTO had utilised more than 100 aircraft in 1941, all of which should be assumed as diverting to Australia. The efforts poured into EATS are at risk of being diverted to home defence

*As for the Army, it was far more modern and up to date but all in England and the Middle East, little more than training facilities in Aus itself. *
There were four combat ready divisions of the AIF, 6th, 7th 8th and 9th. These formations would be most unlikely to leave Australia if the defences in the far east were any worse than they were. Horners Book ‘”High Command’ discusses this very well. 

*Having lived in PNG for many years, walked much of the Kokoda track, been to Bloody Ridge and many of the battle fields there I know exactly what the army was up against there. Bloody ridge is in a sawtooth mountain range over 10,000 feet high within 20 km of the Rai coast and it is hard enough to get to in a helicopter let alone on foot fighting up an almost vertical face with little cover to defeat the Japanese above.*

Ive served and actively defended the place. Being a tourist or a resident is a far cry from training in it. It was hard. I never claimed that the terrain in Australia is worse, but the lack of infrastructure is at least as bad and a lot more extensive with far greater distances.

Now I least know what im up against….a fat cat ultra conservative who believes and supports the neocon fairy stories and expects us underlings to pander to their every whim

*In 1941 many of these formations were short of equipment, because such equipment had been shipped off to the MTO.*
And that’s the very point. If home defences, or so called empire defences were any worse than they were, it is totally stupid to assume that the Australians would continue with that commitment. The AIF formations would have stayed right where they were if the US was not there. If the US was defeated they would have been pukked back earlier than they were…..all of them.

* No but if they had known how under defended Aus was, and how impenetrable PNG was, they could well have walked through - especially if they had bypassed PNG where it was as much the terrain and weather that beat them. And still beats mining companies with all the latest technology*.
The Japanese had surprisingly accurate Intell on the home defences. Read Ballantynes translation of the IJA operations in the solomons. They did over-estimate the air defences.

But I would suggest that both sides were over-estimating each other. The British in Malaya were prime examples of that. If we are going to give the Japanese superpowers for perfect intel, why are we not making similar assumptions for the allies in their assessments


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## parsifal (May 3, 2018)

*The fortress Australia plan was a pipe dream depending on Australia having hundreds of fully serviceable combat aircraft and fully trained troops before Japan arrived. *

And if the US had not committed to the collective security of the Far east, do you seriously suggest the Australians would have embarked on distant operations in the middle east and Europe. The original plans drawn up in 1939 called for all of those AIF formations to be retained in Australia. Even the deployment of the 8th division is questionable under those circumstances.

The alternative scenario is that the US enters the war, but suffers a catastrophic defeat just after Pearl Harbour. In those circumstances we were promised massive reinforcements from Britain. Likely to be in the vicinity of 4-6 divisions and around 1000 a/c.

The allies were not going to abandon Australia in that scenario. Politically it was never going to happen. I believe Churchill in this case. 

Its not a pipe dream if the forces were there. The forces were available, but the need for them never arose



*The bombing raids on Darwin and Broome showed that the defences did not exist and we could not even maintain what few aircraft we had. *

The air raids into Darwin destroyed 23 out of 65 deployed a/c, Damaged or sank 5 ships. Casualties amounted to 238 killed and 312 injured. RAAF losses amounted to 6 a/c from those 23 previously mentioned. All 10 of the USAAC P-40s were lost along with one B-24. Three USN Beechcrafts and 3 PBYs were also destroyed. Total Japanese losses, mostly to nonoperational causes are believed to be in the order of 6 or 7 a/c. given that there were 135 attackers, this was not such a bad result, though it shocked the country at the time. An invasion straight after the raid would have almost certainly have succeeded, but from there where or what are the Japanese going to do?. There was a single brigade group with less than a 1000 trucks available and a cibilian population with maybe 2000 trucks, at most, around Darwin. The Japanese would get ashore, and then be marooned, unable to move……







*We were so incompetent that we sent the Beauforts to Singapore with no guns and no bomb racks.*
The section of Beaforts sent to Singapore were sent as a special recon unit. They weren’t equipped for bombing or fighting





*Yes - so united that on the day Darwin was bombed the wharfies were on strike refusing to load ships with supplies the Australian, Dutch and US military desperately needed to fight the Japanese just a few hundred miles north of Darwin –*

What can I say, this is one of colebatches most outlandish claims. Oh yes, I am aware of where you are getting this drivel from. Why don’t you say that what was needed was a declaration of martial law.


In fact professor Slattery along with about 6 other highly respected authors have all more or less refuted this claim. It is spurious. Oh there were localised labour disputes, for sure but the days lost per man in Australia due to labour disputes was lower than in the UK, and probably lower than in the US. Its just a made ‘alternate history” by the present day far right in our country who have firm beliefs in their rights to entitlement. Is that where you are comng from?



* and they refused to load military goods on ships for various reasons throughout the war*_. _*In Darwin, if the wharfies had not been on strike when the Japanese arrived, the number of ships and tons of cargo sunk would have been lower as the ships would have been on the water or at sea. Also many of those desperately needed military supplies, which were in very short supply, which burned on the docks would have been on the water or at sea. Ships on the water are manouverable and several of those on the water were able to escape. Ships tied to the wharf are stationary targets *
All untrue and baseless im afraid. You've been reading too much of "the world according to allan jones' I'm afraid. 

*Except the ports and trains and MT they would have captured from the Australians. Yes they may have needed to repair a lot of them and that would have slowed them considerably but as they showed in Malaya they adapted instantly*

Further along you argue that the Japanese should have bypassed PNG, which at this time means they don’t invade Rabaul. Okay, not my idea of following core Japanese objectives, but that means there is no invasion of the East Coast. That means they have to invade through Darwin. I think they could do that easily. And with a baseforce landed they probably could have increased the ports throughput capacities from the 1 ship per 3-7 days to say a ship a day. There are no trains in Darwin at this time, and about 3000 trucks, of which at least 1000 were military. They might manage to seize 1000 trucks. That’s not even enough to move a full Brigade “down the track”.

The allies considered turning the tables and using Darwin as a springboard into the NEI but abandoned for preciselu these bottlenecks. Darwin was a port easily interdicted and the overland communications very restricted. An invasion of Australia via Darwin is a losing proposition without a shadow of a doubt. Why can I say that? Because I served nearly 10 years in the navy and even in the time I was serving it was deemed so restricted as to not be suitable for anything larger than a patrol boat. Different now, but not in 1942. 

*As for *_nonexistent supplies _*to send back to Japan, what about all the food and other goods Australia was sending to Britain*

Not from the northern territory and not from the amount of territory the Japanese could hope to conquer with the forces they could possibly depl0y to Australia at that time. In February 1942, they had available the South seas Force (0.5 divs), about a battalion for guam, 2 divs for phillipines. Other forces were still engaged in Malaya the indies and Burma. Good luck conquering austrlia with 2.5 dives and 1000 trucks

*Agreed, unless they bypassed PNG*.
How does that help. It shuts off the east coast of Australia to any invasion if you do that, yields, or releases 0.6 of a division, maybe, and channels your offensive through Darwin. Any other pathway increases the logistic issues faced by the Japanese, not eases it.

*Like they were slowed down in Malaya by the lack of MT and all the bridges being destroyed. Agreed Australia is a totally different scenario but the Japanese thought outside the box whereas Australia was very much in the normal "She'll be right mate" mode right up until February 19, 1942. Even after that they were slow at best to do anything new*

In Malaya there were 2 divs deployed, with only 1 div ever in action at any time. They captured, intact almost the entire MT park of III Indian corps early on, probably around 10000 trucks. They brought with them bicycles, hence the term “bicycle blitz”, but despite all this, found themselves short of supplies at the gates of Singapore

As for the ‘she’ll be right attitude, that had not existed since at least April 1941. We were very nervous about what was developing. We were lied to by the British, because they wanted our continued help in the MTO, but we were also lulled into a false sense of security by the presence of b-17s in the PI, the US pacific flt in Hawaii. As those successive layers of the defensive onion were peeled away we began to enter a state of near panic. Not only the govt, the military, even the civil populace. My mother was evacuated from metropolitan Sydney to my current city in September 1941. But we were committed to collective defence principals and did our best to make it work. It was a riskety structure though. Remove the americans from the equation and I think the whole dynamic will change

*The multiple rail gauges were the result of every railroad having there own standards. You presume that the Japanese would not be able to work with these various gauges even though the Australians could. *

Its irrelevant when you think about it. You have corralled the Japanese to invading Australia in February 1942, not invading PNG (including rabaul). There is no rail net in the Darwin area in 1942 at this time. Good luck playing trains in Darwin with no railways. 

_. _*No, but it would have been much easier than trying to invade Australia through Papua New Guinea*
Well I agree, but to achieve what. Certainly not the conquest of australia, more like the early defeat of japan. Leaving Rabaul in Allied hands would be a first order massive mistake, shortening the war by as much as two years

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## Smokey Stover (May 5, 2018)

Greg Boeser said:


> Let's remember a few facts.
> Japan launched its "Southern Offensive" across a huge expanse of the globe with one objective. To cause, to use a modern term, "shock and awe" to the Allied powers. Quickly gobbling up isolated bases within their sphere of control (Hong Kong, Guam, Wake) and overrunning poorly defended colonial territory in SE Asia, the Allies were to be so demoralized that they would sue for peace. They expected a cakewalk, but reality intervened. In spite of rapid victories in Malaya, Burma and the Philippines, and the rapid seizure of Rabaul, the Japanese quickly found themselves overextended. Resistance at Wake Island delayed the Japanese timetable two weeks and required additional forced to accomplish. Ditto the Philippines, which held out until May and resulted in the commander of the operation being relieved. The surprise attack by the _Lexington_ and _Yorktown _on the Lea-Salamaua landings 10 March, 1942 cost the Japanese three transports critical to further expansion and damage to other ships resulting in a month long delay in launching the Port Moresby operation. Without these critical delays we don't know how much the Japanese could have achieved in severing the lines of communication to the US and UK. Would Australia stand alone against the Japanese if their Allies could not support them? Or would they accept the new status quo? Japan does not have to fight for every inch of Australia, just seize the key ports.



Thats quite right. There were a number of Aussie special forces hiding out in the jungle (with huge help and support of the local indigenous people) making guerrilla style hit and run tactics holding up to 2000 Japanese troops for weeks, and totally cut off from any chain of command as there was no effective radios until they pieced one together from stolen parts after raids into occupied territories. People often overlook the little contributions, concentrating on major battles that in some cases were no more important than nuisance raids.


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## swampyankee (May 5, 2018)

Did India* save the UK from the Germans?

I think this sort of question has many problems, most of which have been addressed, but the ones that I see are:

If the US was neutral, would Australia have been attacked? I think not, as I think the major reason for the Japanese invasion of both the NEI and Malaya was the US-led embargo. I also happen to think that the US and Japan had been on a course towards war since before Tsushima, largely because of US interests in China and US domestic racial politics.
"Neutral" doesn't mean that the US would not be supplying goods under favorable conditions.
Would Japan have been able to occupy the country? Australia is large, but the population is highly concentrated on the coasts. 

Would the populace resist? I think this is certainly a "yes." China is not a good example; they hadn't had an effective central government for decades, nor is the Philippines, as that had been under colonial administration for centuries. There would, of course, had been some percentage of the populace who cooperated, a larger percentage who would be silent, and a small percentage who would resist.


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## Capt. Vick (May 5, 2018)

I think yes, but then you took Mel Gibson so we are even!

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## pbehn (May 5, 2018)

Capt. Vick said:


> I think yes, but then you took Mel Gibson so we are even!


He was Scottish wasn't he?


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## Smokey Stover (May 6, 2018)

Exactly. With respect, Australia was simply not worth invading. Japan simply had no interest or resources to invade a country that has little or no material or strategic value. I mean unless they wanted to spend there days burning in the outback and hunting skippy it was hardly a realistic threat/venture, even on paper. As for the India reference i have no idea what that even means....


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## swampyankee (May 6, 2018)

Smokey Stover said:


> s for the India reference i have no idea what that even means....



Quite a few Indian soldiers fought in North Africa and Europe. There was a great deal of interdependence between the Allies, so the question "did X save Y" can be asked, but not necessarily answered, for any values of X & Y, with some value of "yes," based on how much and what type of assistance. 

The trouble with a lot of these questions, especially in the Pacific, is that US-Japan relations had been fraught for decades, and these relations were a significant, if not the sole, driver of the attacks by Japan into regions where it became a direct threat to Australia. To answer the OP's question, then, is much more difficult than to answer a like question regarding the liberation of Europe, as the US relations with Germany were not quite so rancid as were US-Japanese ones. As I said earlier, the US's domestic racial politics and attitudes were intimately tied with the nature of US-Japan relations

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## GrauGeist (May 6, 2018)

I have never heard of Imperial Japan making the decision to attack the U.S. based on the treatment of Japanese-Americans.
The relationship between the U.S. and Japan had started deteriorating after Japan defeated Russia and condinued to gain momentum as Japan's conquest of Asia drew stronger sanctions and embargoes from the U.S.
Otherwise, if we go by poor treatment of a population, Imperial Japan would have been justified for declaring war on Brazil, who had a far worse track record with it's Japanese population, which happened to be the largest number of Japanese in the world outside of Japan itself.
Add to that, Canada, who had a less than perfect track record with thier Japanese citizens...


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## pbehn (May 6, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> I have never heard of Imperial Japan making the decision to attack the U.S. based on the treatment of Japanese-Americans.
> The relationship between the U.S. and Japan had started deteriorating after Japan defeated Russia and condinued to gain momentum as Japan's conquest of Asia drew stronger sanctions and embargoes from the U.S.
> Otherwise, if we go by poor treatment of a population, Imperial Japan would have been justified for declaring war on Brazil, who had a far worse track record with it's Japanese population, which happened to be the largest number of Japanese in the world outside of Japan itself.
> Add to that, Canada, who had a less than perfect track record with thier Japanese citizens...


In view of how Japanese troops behaved in China it is a complete "non sequitur".

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## swampyankee (May 6, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> I have never heard of Imperial Japan making the decision to attack the U.S. based on the treatment of Japanese-Americans.
> The relationship between the U.S. and Japan had started deteriorating after Japan defeated Russia and condinued to gain momentum as Japan's conquest of Asia drew stronger sanctions and embargoes from the U.S.
> Otherwise, if we go by poor treatment of a population, Imperial Japan would have been justified for declaring war on Brazil, who had a far worse track record with it's Japanese population, which happened to be the largest number of Japanese in the world outside of Japan itself.
> Add to that, Canada, who had a less than perfect track record with thier Japanese citizens...



It's wasn't the treatment of Japanese-Americans (as an aside, look up the Cable Act if 1922..), but the way that US racial attitudes fed into US reactions to Japanese actions: it wasn't that the Japanese government particularly cared about the treatment of Japanese Americans, but how the US government -- which is composed of people who frequently drove and certainly used the racial attitudes -- reacted to Japanese competition, and how this was affected by US racial attitudes. 

People's attitudes will feed into their decision making process, and the Yellow Peril was a very real social meme of the era.


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## Freebird (May 7, 2018)

Smokey Stover said:


> Not to mention for 3 years the only real allied help they received (apart from US/UK reject aircraft and equipment) all they got was cans of corned beef. To which when opening them, joked "we're opening the second front".



With respect, wildly inaccurate...

Hurricanes and A-20s weren't "reject aircraft" it was what the British were using in the Western desert.
Nor were Matilda IIs and Valentine's reject equipment

Shortround has already addressed the dodgy geography, Italy is indeed part of Europe.

Regarding the Soviet myth "no help until late 1943"

Allied assistance began immediately, notably high octane gasoline - produced by the British refinery at Abadan, and paid for with US $.

In just the first 4 months of the Eastern Front, some 156,000 tons of high octane gasoline was delivered - a product that was vital for improved performance of Soviet & Allied aircraft, but which the Soviets couldn't produce domestically.



> From June to the end of October 1941, $92,000,000 worth of strategic goods were delivered from the United States to the Soviet Union, including payment for deliveries of aviation gasoline. In the first part of the war, before Lend-Lease was extended to the USSR, these deliveries totaled 156,335 short tons, of which 25,185 tons were more than 99 octane aviation gasoline; 130,729 tons were 87-99 octane aviation gasoline



Oil of Russia : www.oilru.com : No. 2, 2010 / LEND-LEASE OIL DIMENSION

Note - source isn't wiki....



Shortround6 said:


> I guess my geography lessons were totally inadequate too, I also thought that Italy was part of the European continent. Now I find out it isn't, either that or the Allies didn't land at Salerno Until 1944?Let alone Sicily.

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## GrauGeist (May 7, 2018)

swampyankee said:


> It's wasn't the treatment of Japanese-Americans (as an aside, look up the Cable Act if 1922..), but the way that US racial attitudes fed into US reactions to Japanese actions: it wasn't that the Japanese government particularly cared about the treatment of Japanese Americans, but how the US government -- which is composed of people who frequently drove and certainly used the racial attitudes -- reacted to Japanese competition, and how this was affected by US racial attitudes.
> 
> People's attitudes will feed into their decision making process, and the Yellow Peril was a very real social meme of the era.


Yes, the lingering "Yellow Peril" semtiment from the 1800's may have been floating about, but it was also the United States that presented Japan with her first modern warship, the CSS Stonewall (renamed _Kōtetsu)_ as well as a flourishing trade and alliance that lasted until the prelude to WWII.
So the idealogy that racism played an important part in Japan's decision to go to war with the U.S. is not going to hold water.
Again, if anyone cares to take the time to look at the deteriorating relationship with Japan in the 1930's, they will note that it started when Japan started her conquest of the Asian mainland. Oddly enough, the savage racist Americans were protesting the Japanese invasion of Sovereign "Yellow" nations and the horrific treatment of the "Yellow" natives.
When the racist American Iron and fuel oil became embargoed to the poor, misunderstood Japanese, they had no recourse but to look for their raw materials elsewhere.
Knowing that the racist Americans would eventually intervene, they decided on a pre-emptive strike against U.S. assets in the hopes that the racist Americans would sue for peace...but why am I even saying this?
It's common knowledge why the U.S. and Japan went to war...however, the racist angle is bullsh*t and reeks of modern-day social media safe-space crap.
* hey, let's go find a statue to pull down! *

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## swampyankee (May 7, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> Yes, the lingering "Yellow Peril" semtiment from the 1800's may have been floating about, but it was also the United States that presented Japan with her first modern warship, the CSS Stonewall (renamed _Kōtetsu)_ as well as a flourishing trade and alliance that lasted until the prelude to WWII.
> So the idealogy that racism played an important part in Japan's decision to go to war with the U.S. is not going to hold water.
> Again, if anyone cares to take the time to look at the deteriorating relationship with Japan in the 1930's, they will note that it started when Japan started her conquest of the Asian mainland. Oddly enough, the savage racist Americans were protesting the Japanese invasion of Sovereign "Yellow" nations and the horrific treatment of the "Yellow" natives.
> When the racist American Iron and fuel oil became embargoed to the poor, misunderstood Japanese, they had no recourse but to look for their raw materials elsewhere.
> ...





The question isn’t the “poor, misunderstood Japanese” but whether the US would have behaved the same had a European power been doing the same things as Japan, and why isolationist opposition to foreign intervention seemed to apply only to Europe; there was much more political outcry against some sort of sanction against Germany’s rampage through Europe than Japan’s in China, e.g., the America First movement.

I’m certainly not arguing that Japan was maltreated by the US in the 1920s and 1930s; the “provoked to war” argument, which sometimes seems manifest in Pearl Harbor conspiracy theorists, is not one I believe, just as I do not believe Germany was forced to war by Versailles. Both countries’ leadership chose naked aggression completely voluntarily. 


> * hey, let's go find a statue to pull down! *



I’m sure we could agree on some.

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## Graeme (May 7, 2018)

Smokey Stover said:


> With respect, Australia was simply not worth invading.



No offense taken...

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## Smokey Stover (May 7, 2018)

swampyankee said:


> The question isn’t the “poor, misunderstood Japanese” but whether the US would have behaved the same had a European power been doing the same things as Japan, and why isolationist opposition to foreign intervention seemed to apply only to Europe; there was much more political outcry against some sort of sanction against Germany’s rampage through Europe than Japan’s in China, e.g., the America First movement.
> 
> I’m certainly not arguing that Japan was maltreated by the US in the 1920s and 1930s; the “provoked to war” argument, which sometimes seems manifest in Pearl Harbor conspiracy theorists, is not one I believe, just as I do not believe Germany was forced to war by Versailles. Both countries’ leadership chose naked aggression completely voluntarily.
> 
> ...


Duly noted. But the E.T.O & P.T.O were quite separate wars, militarily and politically speaking. Imo. Also i feel the writing was on the wall with Japanese intentions long before Germany started to rearm/organize for war, or at least a trouble free takeover. Unlikely but every dictator hopes to try, and to a degree hitler pulled it off early on but thats another story. I think the US's mistake (if one can call it a mistake) was totally being ignorant of the Japanese and there culture. And at the risk of repeating what others have said, the US having an outdated racial mentally of the Japanese being totally inferior people. I think both sides could have done more to avoid all out war. But America surely had to realize what sanctions, especially on oil would do to Japan, and lead them to having only one option if they wanted to be a super power. Was it expansionism by Japan or merely the need to be recognized as a superpower. Either way Pearl harbour was not inevitable. And by how bad relations were mid 1941, America should have known better or at least be prepared. It makes one wonder why they weren't. And im no conspiracy buff either.


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## Smokey Stover (May 7, 2018)

You can give a country an arsenal of weapons and supplies but that doesnt guarantee a victory. It's funny how in all the years since ww2 the only argument i and i imagine the rest of europe has ever heard over and over again is the mass production spiel. We gave you X, Ergo thats why you won the war. May i also remind you folks the war started in 39/40. Not 41 or 42. And some of the most defining moments happened in those first one to two years.


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## michaelmaltby (May 7, 2018)

"... Was it expansionism by Japan or merely the need to be recognized as a superpower."
Expansionism was a route to resources required for the growth that Japan strives(d) for ... the US had no empathy for Japanese imperial ambitions, it is an over-simplification to suggest this American attitude was simply racist though there was a strong element of that in reality.

China .. in the 20s, 30s and 40s was more on the American consciousness than one might surmise. American Christians had devoted $$$ and love for China ... which they believed it was their Christian duty to bring to Jesus ... and this, coupled with The Good Earth, Pearl Buck's empathetic novel, created a bond that many Americans felt for the Chinese .. the atrocities resulting from the Japanese invasion were likely more disturbing to middle America than antisemitic events in Germany, IMHO. FDR's wife, Eleanor, was constantly pushing the President to do more for China. Thus the aid kept pouring in and the corruption and incompetence was swept under the rug .. and in the end American received little to no value for their investment.

I have come to understand that events involving China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, etc. interacting with each other, have a _very _long timeline .... and should not be judged simply by the Post-Perry black fleet realities, or the East India Company opium war indulgences in China.

Japan wanted an empire ... _that_ was only fair and just, they believed. China _was_ an empire that was disintegrating from the impact of imperialism and technology. It was historically 'natural' for Japan to colonize China.

Not a pretty process, history.

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## Shortround6 (May 7, 2018)

There is also a big difference between not surrendering (losing right away) and going over onto the offensive and actually overrunning the initial aggressor. 

You don't "Win" total victory by keeping from being totally knocked out yourself. 

The Americans certainly had little to do with keeping the Germans from invading England or even stopping the Germans at the gates of Moscow. 
But without the Americans the invasion of Europe from the west or the advances of the Russians from 1943 on would have been much harder and taken much longer. 

Without the Americans would Germany have been forced to surrender or would there have been a negotiated "peace" in 1946-48 with Germany still occupying large parts of Europe? 

If so is that considered "winning" for the allies? 

I would also note that that American planes were showing up in Europe in 1939 (paid for in cash not gifts), American tanks stated showing up in North Africa in Nov of 1941, considering they had to be shipped around the Cape of Good Hope and crews needed a bit of training that means the supplies were affecting things months before the US actually declared war. 
US Neutrality patrol did free up at least a few ships for the British. 

Many of the nations of Europe and the British commonwealth suffered high losses in men and wealth and it should be possible to honor them with trying to degrade the US effort. 

I would note that Germany made slightly more steel during WW II than the British, Canada, and the USSR put together. German allies added slightly to this total. 
The US out produced everybody combined by a large margin. 

You need a lot more men, weapons, and ammunition to attack than to defend.

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## michaelmaltby (May 7, 2018)

"... The US out produced everybody combined by a large margin."
America was the only _principle _participant in WW1 (Canada was not yet a totally independent state at this time, same for other Commonwealth participants, IDB) that was not wrecked economically, socially and politically by the war. The great Wall Street Crash (1929-1934 aprox) was _nothing_ compared to the destruction WW1 caused European states.
Only America had the wealth, talent, productivity and 'daring do' to energize the Allied war effort.
German soldiers on the Eastern Front saw with their own eyes America's largess ...

Today ... America's situation in the world is somewhat different ... and that is understandable ... the Marshall Plan and the Cold War were huge outlays that America made ... only to face the challenge of a rising China and a resurgent Russia


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## parsifal (May 7, 2018)

Japan was hardly touched by WWI either.

Other nations suffered varying levels of destruction. The major European nations all suffered massive financial losses. France, Germany, Poland, other European (continental) nations, suffered massive destruction of property. but the biggest losses were manpower losses. For Germany there were additional losses , mostly in prestige and a sense of betrayal that made all these other losses that much more unpalatable.

The US emerged with the least damage of the great powers, but Japan also was relatively unscathed 


An article I found from the ABC is pretty good in describing our national psyche between the wars.

We didn't choose to join WWI - nothing has changed

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## Hansie Bloeckmann (May 7, 2018)

michaelmaltby said:


> "... Was it expansionism by Japan or merely the need to be recognized as a superpower."
> Expansionism was a route to resources required for the growth that Japan strives(d) for ... the US had no empathy for Japanese imperial ambitions, it is an over-simplification to suggest this American attitude was simply racist though there was a strong element of that in reality.
> 
> China .. in the 20s, 30s and 40s was more on the American consciousness than one might surmise. American Christians had devoted $$$ and love for China ... which they believed it was their Christian duty to bring to Jesus ... and this, coupled with The Good Earth, Pearl Buck's empathetic novel, created a bond that many Americans felt for the Chinese .. the atrocities resulting from the Japanese invasion were likely more disturbing to middle America than antisemitic events in Germany, IMHO. FDR's wife, Eleanor, was constantly pushing the President to do more for China. Thus the aid kept pouring in and the corruption and incompetence was swept under the rug .. and in the end American received little to no value for their investment.
> ...


A older movie bears out your wording:" American Christians had devoted $$$ and love for China-- The Sand Pebbles-- Candice Bergen plays an American Christian missionary (who must have read Pearl S. Buck's book-) who flogs her faith to the hopeless Chinese, caught in a trap of not their own making-- We sided with Chang Kai Shek and his English speaking wife against the overwhelming Japanese invasion of Manchuria and mainland China-- because of economic factors- Japan, an island Country, had to import her raw materials-China not so much-- The anti-Asian prejudices of Americans date back to the early railroad expansion eras in American- Chinese coolies worked on railroads, operated laundries and other service oriented businesses--

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## parsifal (May 7, 2018)

The fundamental differences separating the US and Japan are more easily explained than is being presented here. sure there were nuances and prejudices that fed into the equation but the reasons for the slowly percolating conflict gets down to two basic principles that underpin each country's responses.

Japan was a supporter of most favoured nation , sometimes referred to as special spheres of influence. The Japanese Greater East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere was based on that principal.

The Americans were diametrically opposed to this principal , usually expressed as the Open Door Policy. 

Its ironic to me that the Japanese lost the war along with the other nations that wanted to set up closed "spheres of influence" such as Germany and Italy. In the post war era Germany, along with France again promioted a most favoured nation agenda in the form of the EEC whilst Japan adopted the US free trade model. In recent time the US, fearing its loss of market share has turned sharply away from free trade to pursue a more closed model for trade. The new US approach lacks the finesse (or creepiness?????) of the Europeans and to me is bound to fail for that reason.

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