Wild_Bill_Kelso
Senior Master Sergeant
- 3,231
- Mar 18, 2022
We discussed all this in depth. Most of the RN submarines didn't have sufficient range, they could have done some damage but could not have prevented the fall of Malaya on their own.
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True. If the ETO and MTO were not so demanding of ships, the RN's submarines would be very useful against the IJN. Put a dozen RN boats between FIC and Malaya and another doze split between Sarawak and Penang, all with effective ROE, and the IJN's inept ASW should see much of their invasion fleet sunk.
Well, we are over 30 pages and 630 posts into this discussion.
The RN (and Commonwealth) in actual history was fighting very, very out numbered, poorly supplied and pretty much lacking in air cover/support.
Which would go badly for any navy.
In a what if scenario with better air cover/support, better supply and more numbers a lot of mismatch goes away.
However the match up would not be RN substitutes for USN situation, at least not if the RN has at least some combat experience.
The RNs strengths are not the same as the USN strengths and the RN weaknesses are not the USN weaknesses.
With 15-20 RN subs at the start that entire aspect of the naval war gets flipped. Japanese losses due to submarines goes way up (British torpedoes worked).
Night actions get somewhat turned around. Again British torpedoes worked, British had more experience with radar/night fighting than the USN did. Enough better or equal to the IJN???
Large carrier battles?
British loose.
Big daylight BB action?
British don't engage (they aren't going to have the numbers unless the war in Europe is very different).
Amount of British air cover/support???
A big hinge point. If the initial Japanese attacks do not go well they get sucked into a sort of Guadalcanal battle of attrition only in the western DEI/Singapore area sooner than Guadalcanal.
British also get sucked into the same sort of battle, trying to keep land forces supplied in Malaysia and much of the southern DEI. IJA is still somewhat stuck in China.
If the British can get more resources into Burma before the fight starts the British may be able to hold Burma (mosty) and keep the Burma road open.
Japanese subs can attack the British supply lines in the Indian Ocean. However the British are better at ASW than the Japanese. It will take a while but the Japanese cannot replace losses as well.
Lets look at the basics. The world's navies were set up on the famous 5 : 5 : 3 : 3 : 3 ratio. This scenario has the US (5) sitting it out and with it the US bases in the Pacific, which the Japanese cannot use.
German surface fleet is somewhere between 1 and 2. If Norway happened as historically Germany is barely at 1.
Without the defeat-surrender of France, Italy and France pretty much cancel each other out.
Without a lot of war losses and the need to ride herd on the Italian and German navies the British can out number the Japanese in just about every catagory except carriers.
How much strength does the RN need to hold Burma, Malaya, Singapore and the DEI and get the IJN into a war of attrition that the Japanese cannot win?
If we can get Weimar to work (keeping Stresemann alive might just do it) and keep Mussolini in check, the Japanese will be facing much of the RN. Though with a lessor threat of Germany between the wars, what does the RN look like?
With little scholarly research, I would say the RN would have been a nasty surprise to the IJN. Especially at night.
That's crazy talk.It's important people grasp basic realities.
A big part of the problem is the basic set up of the scenario.You may want to go check through the discussion. I really don't mind bringing it all out again. It's important people grasp basic realities.
A big part of the problem is the basic set up of the scenario.
The British cannot win if the US is not part of the battle, case closed.
The British simply do not have the resources to fight Germany, Italy and Japan at the same time.
However if we start trying to figure IF the British can fight only two countries at the same time (Germany/Japan or Italy/Japan) then we can start discussing technical merits and not simply numbers.
That is part of the basic realities.
The basic premise would never have happened as the Japanese did not know how bad the US torpedoes were and the Japanese were not going to leave a US submarine base with almost 30 subs sitting right in the middle of their supply lines with the aid of several hundred fighters, bombers and recon planes while the IJN sailed on their merry way down to Java and Borneo. The US was one of the chief instigators of the embargo's. That is a reality.
If people want to twist the reality to take the US out of the situation for a fantasy battle between the Japanese and the British to show how superior the Japanese were with the British stuck with historically deployment of troops, ships, aircraft we are not going to learn much.
It changes quite a bit. A lot more British ships in the far east fleet. A lot more troops/equipment and training in the ground forces. And more numbers of aircraft and more modern aircraft for the RAF in the area.Put Germany out of the war (or focusing on Russia first) and France and Italy cancel each other out. I don't think it changes a thing.
The RN (and Britain in general) had planned a force structure to contest the Japanese in the Far East. They had not planned to have to guard the entire Atlantic coast of France, Convoy routes through both the the North and South Atlantic and Indian Oceans and fight or contain the entire Italian fleet AND deal with Japan at the same time.What we can learn is that the RN ships air aircraft were unable to cope with the IJN equivalent. We don't have to write an alternative reality screenplay to do that. Just sweeping away the BS which crops up here routinely. That's my only goal.
That's crazy talk.
The IJN entered the war in Dec 1941, not Sept 1939. The Fulmar was envisaged for the Ark Royal from late 1937 and a production contract was issued on 5 May 1938. Production began in early 1940. The IJN was not in a position to fight a carrier based naval war in Sept 1939 as they only had 3 fleet carriers in service; 3 more came into service from late 1939 to late 1941.True. But if Ark Royal was designed to fight Japan in the IPTO, it would be good to consider the aircraft Japan was using and had in development. The only fighter envisioned for Ark Royal seems to be the Skua, which while having four .303 mgs vs. the A5M's two, does not seem like a competitive match. And the Skua is significantly slower than the B5N and the IJN's Bettys and Nells. Not a good fleet defence fighter, but there's no folding-wing fighter from the British that can fit down Ark's narrow lifts until the Fulmar and later Seafire. Fulmar vs. Zero, poor bastards in the FAA fighter.
| 12.1939 | 16 A5M2 | 20 D1A2 | 38 B4Y1 |
In Dec 1941, the BEC was working on the world's first atomic weapon development program; TUBE ALLOYS. BEC industrial and technological development was far ahead of Japan, but the BEC couldn't fight all the axis powers combined without Allies. In a straight fight between the BEC and Japan, the war ends badly for Japan.Japan attacked in Dec 1941 precisely because it seemed that the Axis was winning and the RN had suffered massive losses. So we have two possible scenarios here, one where the RN has been terribly bled and the British Empire and Commonwealth (BEC) is engaged in a life and death struggle in the ETO/MTO or one where the the BEC has not gone to war in the ETO/MTO and the RN has been free to expand as per it's prewar plans and the BEC could devote it's entire resources to fighting Japan.
If we look at the non-war BEC in Dec 1941 and compare it's scientific, economic and military resources with Japan, we can see that the odds are tilted heavily in favour of the BEC and it's very likely that Japan would not have attacked.
Not so much inter-war. Look at how much effort went into the Treaty era limiting the power and numbers of Battleships and extracting the max from what was available to navies when compared to other types. Until WW2 carriers were not that numerous in any navy. On 3 Sept 1939 the numbers for the RN/USN/IJN in service were 6 (Argus, then classified as an auxiliary, wasn't reactivated as a training carrier until Nov 1939)/5/6. And of those 1/2/2 had entered service in 1937-39. On order/under construction you have 6 (the armoured Illustrious / Implacable classes) / 2 (Wasp & Hornet, with funding for a third) / 2 (Shokaku & Zuikaku)...... Aircraft carriers matter........
And the Fulmar was ordered as an "interim two-seater front gun fighter ... (for quick production)..."The IJN entered the war in Dec 1941, not Sept 1939. The Fulmar was envisaged for the Ark Royal from late 1937 and a production contract was issued on 5 May 1938. Production began in early 1940. The IJN was not in a position to fight a carrier based naval war in Sept 1939 as they only had 3 fleet carriers in service; 3 more came into service from late 1939 to late 1941.
When Hiryu came into service in late 1941, this was her aerial complement:
12.1939 16 A5M2 20 D1A2 38 B4Y1
Ark Royal came out heavy, despite a lot of welding being used in her construction. Designed for 22,000 tons standard displacement on completion she was 22,585 tons (declared under WNT rules at 22,500 tons). But there were discrepancies between the calculated weights (as noted above) and those revealed by actual inclining experiments. The latter brought her out at 22,870 tons with full ammunition load. Some of the early 1934 figures showing her at 22,000 tons included only 75% of both ship and aircraft munitions (but space was provided for the full load). That was coupled with a hope that weight could be saved during construction. This was done for a number of British ship designs of the period. So there is less margin to play with than might be assumed (data from Friedman "British Carrier Aviation").The info I have:
standard displacement increased to from 22,000 tons to 23,000 tons (you can do a lot with 1,000 tons)
different elevator arrangements - still the same basic size elevators but having one platform that serves both hangars
improved machinery, more efficient (basically similar to the Illustrious class) including improved rudder arrangements
improved internal arrangements and compartmentalization
improved/increased emergency services
heavier catapults (accelerators)
crash barriers
primary AA moved to the gallery deck (for better coverage of airspace)
some rearrangement of armour
still 64x large or 72x medium size folding wing aircraft
Plus by the early-war you would have had:
various radars including air search and AA FC
fighter control center, similar to those onboard the Illustrious class in the MTO
outriggers for additional aircraft (probably 5x) as in Illustrious class
increased light and/or medium AA